RoyalRoad
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Jen and Sarah spent the next week doing research. The Internet was filled with contradictory information about monetary theory and economics, and neither of them really had the background to evaluate the arguments that everyone was having.
However, Sarah reminded them both, they didn't need to look at a perfect system, just one that worked. So, they started digging through Wikipedia articles and online textbooks on the history of money and how they came to be.
"Hey, did you know they used to use salt as currency?" Sarah asked as she skimmed through a particularly fascinating documentary about Middle Age East African economies.
"Is this some kind of joke about mining salt?"
"No, it's real, look. And apparently the word salary is from the Latin word salarium for money used to buy salt," Sarah continued fascinated.
Of course, they couldn't use something as simple as salt to represent money. In fact, they couldn't use any commodity either.
Over the last week, one of the alien traders caught wind that gold was extremely valuable on Earth, so they'd brought them in by the ton load. Gold was still useful for electronics and some dentistry, but the price of gold, mostly propped up by its value in rarity, crashed hard.
The problem with currency in galactic trading, as Sarah discovered, was that there wasn't a single commodity that was equally rare in every system.
No, whatever alternative they come up to the laughably outdated barter system had to be built on something far more rare and valuable than gold.
Something that even the most powerful human empires in history have struggled to collect.
It had to be built on trust.
"That's the system most modern currencies are based on," Sarah claimed, "you only accept dollars for work because you trust that you're going to be able to wake up tomorrow and spend it on… everything you need."
"Hmm well, we can't just ask them to take US dollars," Jen giggled. This would be so much easier if that weren't true.
"Why not?" Sarah asked, playing the devil's advocate.
"Well… well, like you said, they won't trust it! I certainly wouldn't if I were a trader! Furthermore, who knows? Maybe they have a printer in their ship that can duplicate money! Maybe we should ask them for that next time we bring Zarko some pears," Jen said, thinking out loud.
"I doubt it. The government keeps a lot of secrets about how they make Dollars , and I don't want the Secret Service knocking on my door," Sarah said. Until this week, she hadn't known that this was one of the lesser known duties of the USSS. Now that she knew it, it made the thought of attracting their attention even less palatable, "you're right. What about digital casino tokens? We can produce something that translates to Dollars and have our own system that tracks it all."
"Sure, that's not too hard to make. We would have a centralized money supply, where we don't trust each end point…" Jen continued on the brainstorm, thinking in terms of the technical system, "ok, so say we make SarahBucks, and peg its value to the US Dollar. One pound of pears would be worth 1.5 SarahBucks, one pound of sirloin steak is 6.99 SarahBucks at Safeway. That still doesn't explain how we'll get people to use it."
"I'm not sure. I need to think about this more," Sarah yawned, tired. "And I hate that name."
They agreed that they were stuck, and that SarahBucks was absolutely a terrible name.
Livermore Spaceport, Earth
A month after the spaceport opening, Sarah noticed that it had become less of a tourist attraction. There were far fewer people standing around gawking at the aliens, and a lot more companies trucking their best-selling products into the spaceport for trade.
After their abuse of Jen's cousin's employee pass got discovered by the spaceport authorities, Sarah and Jen had started placing their own bids on getting into the spaceport through the official channels. Thanks to their existing connections with the managers at the spaceport and a growing bank account of value, they could still get in to continue their lucrative trade for magical alien goods.
A bit of a rich-get-richer type of situation.
The flavor of the month were these Bohor magical air filter machines that aggressively scrubbed the air of… anything you want them to.
The Bohor planet is basically the planetary equivalent of a toxic dump.
Sure, it had biomes; it wasn't a Star Wars sci-fi planet where the entire planet is either a desert or an ice-cold tundra or a forest. But the entire planet had been polluted so heavily by its occupants that it lowered the life expectancy by half before the Bohors found a solution:
They simply filtered their entire atmosphere through air filter machines and then buried the toxins and garbage they got out of it in a very deep landfill, somewhere where very few people lived. Pretty much the kind of solution you'd expect out of a species that created the original problem in the first place.
Zikzik, the alien that was the same species as Zarko, overheard a human asking about their rocket fuel and climate change, and brought in a cargo hold of them.
It was a massive hit.
Earth's climate change problem wasn't nearly as bad as Bohor, but it was relatively simple to program these machines to suck carbon out of its atmosphere and… bury them in a landfill.
At first, few of the human traders bought them, thinking that it was going to be at least a while before the problem became big enough that big governments were going to come to them to try to address the issue, but they had it all wrong.
Soon as word got out this was an option, big companies and philanthropists started lining up at their doors. As it turned out, literally sucking the carbon dioxide out of the air was easier and cheaper than modifying many of their industrial practices to actually be environmentally green. They didn't need to run more efficient factories to claim to be carbon-neutral; just pump as much carbon into the air in exchange for undoing that by sucking it out of the atmosphere after!
Some bean counters at a think tank in DC predicted that a few more shipments of these air filters will fix Earth's climate problems by themselves in about a decade, so every trader had a waiting list of corporations with PR problems willing to buy them.
Sarah and Jen had a couple vehicle manufacturing companies on their list who were trying to get Bohor air filters to use in lobbying for looser emission standards for their dirty gasoline cars.
Today, there were traders on all the landing pads, and they were all carrying air filters. Zarko's ship was there, and he was loading fruits into his spaceship with an alien looking forklift. Sarah and Jen approached his ship and noticed the truck driver standing there.
"Hey Benny, tempting the poor aliens with cherries this time?" Sarah waved good, grinning and looking at his cargo.
Technically, Benny is a competitor, or at least he drives for a competitor. The massive fruit conglomeration he worked for, Chuckita, had not neglected to notice the massive business opportunity sitting right here as many others have, and are now delivering straight to the aliens in exchange for massive profit margins.
But Benny was a good guy. One time Jen and Sarah were having some trouble finding a buyer for a bunch of legally dubious alien psychedelics. Benny was in his late 50s, not that great with the Internet either, so he'd introduced them to whom he referred to as "my money launderer". Aka, his 22-year-old son, Benny Jr, who had a habit of buying weed and other less than legal items off the deep web. Benny Jr had found a buyer for them within minutes and even generously offered to handle the deal for them to spare them the risk of meeting some psycho hopped up on an alien high in a dark alley somewhere.
"Heh! One of the bat aliens loves sweets but has a low tolerance for sour, so they treat cherries as some kind of an odd challenge fad. They eat a random cherry, and it's either so incredibly sweet they start drooling out of the mouths, or it's a sour one, and they freak out," Benny replied, in a low voice as if he were trying to keep it a big secret. "Zarko showed me a video, and it's the most hilarious thing I've ever seen".
"I think I've seen that one, have you seen the one where they drink wine?" Sarah chuckled at the memory. Alien videos have been a big hit on YouTube. Some human merchants were trading fruit for aliens to take videos of the galaxy. Which they monetized, of course.
"No," Benny's ears perked up. Chuckita doesn't make wine, but if selling wine to aliens was going to be a thing, they were a big supplier of grapes… "Is it gonna be a thing?"
"Well guess what we brought today?" Jen also grinning from ear to ear, and holding up a big carton of low-quality box wine.
"Awww seems like I'm always one step behind you guys," Benny moaned in exaggeration, "I tried to get my money launderer to tell me what aliens would want but all he does is play video games on the Internet, kids these days."
Luckily, Zarko chose this moment to step out to spare them from more good-humored ribbing from the boomer. "Ah Sarah and Jen, you brought the grape wine this time!"
"Yup," Sarah beamed, "and I see you've run out of air filters to trade again!"
"Sadly yes," Zarko tilted his head in shame, "my ship is overdue for a cargo space upgrade, but I haven't found a port that would do it for fruit yet. Next time?"
"Alright! Alright! We'll leave our special wine with you, but you better get us some extra good filters next time!" Jen scolded mockingly. Zarko has gotten a lot more comfortable doling out IOUs since the first time.
"Of course. Only the best for you two," Zarko said with a greasy human smile imitation that almost made Sarah laugh out loud. It reminded her of a ridiculous cartoon sloth.
"By the way," Sarah asked casually, "how much is a spaceship worth on your planet?"
Zarko sobered up his expression and looked at her curiously. It was a question that other humans had asked before. To him, it was a good sign. This meant that they all dreamt of the stars. But he didn't expect such a question from someone as seemingly practical as Sarah. She had a lot of fruit, sure, but fruit doesn't build spaceships.
After thinking for a while, he replied honestly, "ships aren't traded for one single item. My family traded for the parts to build mine for generations."
He pointed at his spaceship.
Zarko proudly explained, "this is the work of eighteen generations of trading. My family was one of the richest on Zeep-zep. For thirteen generations, they traded for each of the parts on this beauty. Then, for the last five, my ancestors traded excess food from the tenant farmers on their land to expert craftsbeings that could put it together."
"Wait, eighteen generations?" Jen gasped. Eighteen generations ago, her family were probably peasants on a farm in Korea or something…
"Yes," Zarko said, looking at them with a little of pity. "After getting the spaceship, my family has traded in it for twelve generations, through civil wars and disasters."
He did some math on his hands, and said, "that's about four hundred of your years. That's why it's very unlikely that you will never go to space."
Looking at the stunned expression on their faces, he tried to lighten the mood. Zarko said mischievously, "unless you're willing to part with some more of your fruit, in which case I'll let you sit in the back seat for a whole route!"
"Hold on, back up, I'm still stuck on the multiple generations part," Sarah said seriously. "You're saying you're flying on a spaceship that started to be built thirty generations ago? That's… about a millennia for us."
"Yes," Zarko answered, "and that's why only thirteen families on my planet have had the privilege of owning one in our long history. No offense, but that's why I think no human will ever own their own spacecraft for at least fifteen more generations."
Something is wrong here, Sarah thought. The budget for NASA's FTL spacecraft was in the hundreds of millions. Yes, for a fruit farmer, that would be many generations of work if all their descendants worked in the same industry. But there were over three thousand billionaires on Earth, not including the tens of thousands of corporations that had assets or market value over a billion. And the prices for the spacecraft would surely go down as time went on…
For a planet like Zarko's to only have thirteen spaceships over generations of their development…
As they were walking away, Benny asked, "have you guys noticed something weird about the way these aliens do business?"
"Yes." "God yes." They said in unison.
"We've been thinking about it for a while, but these guys not having money is a major problemo," Sarah said, looking around surreptitiously, "Zarko and Zikzik keep talking about not being able to find someone who can upgrade their hulls for fruit. And sometimes they come with nothing good, and we're supposed to just drive our fruits all the way back!"
"And if you think about it, if they were human ships, think about truckers who don't own their trucks. We'd have loans or something to deal with the cargo space problems, and they'd be paid for by profits in a few trips," Jen added.
"The numbers he gave us for spacecraft ownership seem insane," Sarah agreed. "Your company could probably afford to order one right now, not to mention hundreds of others. They must all be dirt poor!"
Benny seemed relieved that he wasn't the only one who was thinking this, "exactly! I'm thinking we just introduce them to the concept of Benjamins and solve all their problems and ours. Would certainly make the return trip a lot easier for me if I didn't have to drive all the way to Berkeley for junior to launder all this crap!"
"We thought of that too," Sarah said as Benny pretended to groan again, "but we couldn't figure out how to get them to take money with no intrinsic value."
"Oh that shouldn't be too hard," Benny said, who's clearly already thought through this problem in his head, "we play a little game called good cop, bad cop."
"Good cop bad cop?"
"Sure, it's a mind game the cops play, where they put you in a room-"
"Yeah we know what it is, but how does that help us?" Sarah said impatiently, an idea tugging on her subconscious.
"Well you see," Benny clearly smugly enjoying this moment where he's thought of something that the duo did not, "you two come with an empty truck next time, and you tell Zarko that you'll give him a wad of clean crisp cash, fresh from the bank, for some of his air filters. And when he asks you why he'd take the cash, you just tell him that he can give it to me in exchange for some of my fruits."
"What does that have anything to do with good cop bad cop?!" Jen asked.
"That has nothing to do with good cop bad cop," Sarah chimed in, but the idea was beginning to form in her head, "but it's a good start. We don't want to deal in cash. It's too risky. It could get the feds onto us and there's a bunch of laws around it that I'm not sure about."
"But what we can do is have an internal money system for traders pegged to the US Dollar!" Jen completed.
"Yup, so when Zarko comes back next time, we tell him he has an account with the Bank of Benny, we give him a fancy looking card that has his bank account number and give him a pin code, and we deposit a certain amount of BennyBucks into his account for giving us air filters. Then when you come around, Zarko gives you his card and pin, and gives you BennyBucks for your fruit," Sarah finished.
"Aha. And then I come to you two, say, I would like to convert BennyBucks in my Bank of Benny account to good old American dollars," Benny extrapolated, completing that final step.
"Yeah! We'll just wire you the money and everyone gets theirs," Sarah exclaimed, happy they've finally thought through the loop and gotten someone on board.
"BennyBucks is a terrible name though," Jen said, calming everyone down a little, "and why are we getting so excited over the basic concept of currency? And why haven't aliens figured this out? Maybe it's against some kind of space trading code."
"Who knows? Maybe we just try it on Zarko and see if it works out," Benny said, a glint in his eyes, "and then we expand, galaxy-tically."
"Galactic credits!" Sarah exclaimed, "that's what we'll call it."
They agreed that it was the least worst name that they'd come up with so far. It was boring, but when it came to finances, maybe boring and cliché was a good choice after all.
"Explain again. I am trying to understand," Zarko said two days later as he offloads the air filters he'd promised.
"C'mon dude, for the fifth time," Sarah exasperated, "it's not that hard. We give you a bank account card and have you set up a secret number…"
Jen had spent the last two days coding up a storm. Technically, a simple debit system wasn't that hard, but she had to make a website interface that Benny could go up to and enter his account, Zarko's card information and amount, then let Zarko type in his code…etc. She'd mused that it would have been easier to just do this all in a cloud-based spreadsheet, but that wouldn't scale up if they had more customers.
Sarah had the account cards laminated and designed a logo: the letters GC, for Galactic Credit, and a stylized version of a Milky Way in the background. Part of the value in a trustworthy system is to look official, and you can't get much more official than laminated cards.
"Yes, I understand that part," Zarko said, clearly displaying his frustration on his facial expression as well, "but I don't understand why Benny would give me his fruit for just entering a number."
"Because we have an agreement with him that he'll take it in exchange for fruit!" Sarah was sure this was the umpteenth time she had to explain this, but clearly Zarko was not getting it.
"Is it similar to a debt?" Zarko said suspiciously, as if debt was this dark magic that the humans were performing on him, "I have never heard of this kind of debt before."
"Yes, it's a debt, of sorts," Jen cut in. The last time he had asked this exact question, they'd said no, and that led to fifty other questions and explanations that went nowhere, so nothing could go worse if they said yes-
"Ok. I don't understand," Zarko did his sloth version of a sigh, it was cute, but at the same time frustrating for Sarah and Jen, "But I can try it. I know you two are not trying to trick me. Do I get my fruits before I take off?"
"Yes! You go to Benny-" Sarah started.
"Yes! And that's it. Benny gives you his fruit," Jen cut her off, knowing that this was about to launch into yet another long, long line of questions they just can't deal with right now.
Sarah set up a new account for Zarko, asked him for a 6 digit base ten pin code (thank god Zarko was a ten digit species) which he promptly memorized, and hoping that Jen's prototype website wouldn't fail, showed him how they were "giving" Zarko 40,000 Galactic Credits for 8 Bohor air filter machines into his account ("No, you can't have my iPad. It's on your account card now. Show this to Benny later.")
"Well that worked out great," Benny said as he watched them wire him the $25,000 for his truck shipment of fruit. Though his costs were in the low thousands, he could have easily fleeced Zarko for his full 40k. But they all agreed that wasn't the point, which was to get Zarko to see the benefits of using a currency system abstracted from goods and services.
"Dude, you weren't there," Sarah complained, "I don't understand why he had such a hard time understanding money. Money equals goods. Bing bang boom. It's like these guys don't have the capability for abstract thinking."
"No they definitely do. You can't build spaceships without abstract math and science," Jen said, "but he clearly had a deathly aversion to using money. I think it's tied to some taboo to debt somehow. All the other species must have it because none of the aliens we've met have even mentioned anything close to a real economy."
"Whatever it is," Benny sighed happily, "I'm just happy I didn't have to go home with my truck full of weird alien toys."
"Yup. The next step is to get all the human traders to take credits. At least they'll have no problems understanding the benefits."
Sarah made some calls to the trader licensing office at the spaceport. There she found a manager willing to part with phone numbers and contact information for the other human traders, for an "information fee" of course, and started making calls to the other human traders.
It wasn't easy. Some traders were representatives of bigger food companies, and didn't have all the flexibility to make these kinds of decisions. And others no doubt were thinking of copying their system for their own profit. But they all saw the benefits of a unified network of currency debiting because they've been suffering the same problems that Sarah, Jen, and Benny had been.
Over the next few days, all the human traders agreed to take galactic credit from the aliens, which they knew they could exchange for cash with Sarah and Jen.
"We are officially in business."
In economics, there's a distinction made between different kinds of money. There's commodity money, usually gold or silver. There's representative money, which is currency backed by commodities like gold or silver. And then there's fiat money, which is not backed by any intrinsic value, but rather by government decree, hence fiat.
Galactic Credits fall into some kind of weird hybrid category between representative and fiat money. They're backed by the Dollar, which is fiat money, but also which makes them representative money. This means that the people issuing them, in this case Jen and Sarah, are not supposed to create them without also having a corresponding US Dollar in their bank account.
Of course, Sarah and Jen hadn't signed an ironclad contract with the other human traders that they're always guaranteed to take their galactic credits and exchange for money, so technically that meant that one day Sarah could simply "deposit" a large number of credits in her account and buy all the goods she wanted from Zarko, or potentially the other traders.
That would, however, be slaughtering the golden goose for the meat.
After all, they didn't want to sell fruit or Bohor air filters.
They wanted to sell the concept of money.
"Why would I take this over fruit?" Zikzik sniffed. He was known as a sharp one by all the human traders. If there's any new alien fad coming down the pipeline, chances are Zikzik is the first one to touchdown with a cargo hold full of it.
Unlike many of the other traders, he was fairly consistent in his dealings. This much fruit is for this much air filters. He knows his price, and he lets you know it too. Everyone suspected he kept careful records of all his selling and buying somewhere in his ship, but he's never brought them out. Maybe he just had a sharp memory.
"It's very consistent," Sarah insisted, trying to appeal to his affinity for a stable and predictable exchange, "one pound of fruit today is the same as one pound of fruit tomorrow, and you can deal in fractions."
Completely ignoring that most fruits are seasonal, and price changes, and inflation, she thought, let's start here.
"Fractions, you say?" Zikzik seemed thoughtful, or maybe he's just scratching an itch on his snout, Sarah could never tell with these aliens.
"Yes, fractions," said Jen detecting the slightest bit of opening, "you can trade your air filters for credit. Then you can trade maybe three quarters of your credits to fill your cargo with fruit. The next time you come down here to Earth, you would only need to bring half the amount of air filters as the first trip, combined with the credits you have left, you can leave with a full cargo load anyway!"
Is that how that math goes, Sarah thought, but didn't cut in, as Zikzik seems to be nodding, an oddly universal gesture for affirmation.
"Five eighths of the credits," Zikzik argued, "The air filters are harder to get now because the Bohor are running low, and they need time to make more."
Bargaining! There we go! That's what we're talking about! Sarah almost pumped her fists in the air and gave him a high five, not a great idea given how sharp his claws are as she found out when trying to shake his hands a couple of weeks ago.
"Ok, you would still have to negotiate that amount with each human trader," Sarah replied adding, "but they all deal in Galactic Credits."
They signed him up for an account, gave him a card, and set up his pin code. It had only taken half an hour to get Zikzik on board, which was significantly faster than the hours they'd taken to explain this to Zarko, despite them being the same species. Was it xenocist that she'd assume it was going to take just as long, Sarah wondered.
Looking at the line of traders, she sighed. This was going to be a long day.
Luckily, Zikzik accepting the credits made for great advertising. He was known for being a sharp trader, so if he doesn't think it's a scam, it must not be, right?
Sarah and Jen managed to get two other traders that day onto credits, and one more who was dipping his proverbial toes into the water.
It was a good day.
Jen had been working hard. The Galactic Credits website was now on its 16th major iteration. She'd beefed up the security on it, to make sure none of the other human traders got any funny ideas. Backups became more automatic and frequent, and there was now a rollback and dispute mechanism, not that it was being used yet.
Sarah had also been working hard. She'd been sitting in meetings all day with legal, finances, and now they had a small army of people who were ready to help out if they got into trouble there. Galactic Credits is now officially a tax paying LLC incorporated in the great state of Delaware.
Benny Jr, who had just finished college, had come in as well. He was no good at talking to clients, but he's what the duo would refer to as "street smart". Occasionally, the alien traders would bring in some exotic or ahem, dubiously sourced items, and he would know exactly where to convert that into cold hard cash. On the spreadsheets, his dealings were adding up to a nice fat padding on the margins for Galactic Credits, which to this point, hasn't been making any money other than in the fruit and air filters exchange business.
They were now working out of a rented office in downtown Livermore, with a very nice view of a brick-lined pub that offers numerous craft beers and the old railroad that runs through the heart of town.
Ironically, there's a Bank of America branch across the street, not far from the office itself, the company that had invented the BankAmericard and started the credit card revolution, seemingly oblivious to this new competitor moving into town, literally and figuratively.
They had many brilliant finance experts who were working on something, surely, but established financial institutions are not always great at moving fast and adapting to changing technology. There were many regulations to worry about, and the stakes were a lot higher.
There's something very quaint about the town itself. Some people didn't consider it part of the Bay Area metro area itself, but with the latest BART expansion station they recently built, that's been less and less true.
Now, it was literally the town where the train tracks ended. And where the final frontier began.
For the people in the office, it's also where they dreamt about a new financial revolution in the galaxy.
Some people have critiqued this chapter on the grounds that established financial institutions would have thought of this idea on day one. I appreciate the feedback, but that is a rosy view of the velocity at corporations in my opinion. I've personally worked in some of these companies, and if someone brought up this idea, it would probably have taken at least a month to get the idea through various risk audits and legal reviews.
In terms of technology, much of banking still operates on software that predates the modern Internet. This is one of the reasons why fin-tech startups have been able to beat them on time-to-market, despite massive institutional or financial disadvantages. It's why companies like PayPal, Square, Stripe, Venmo… etc could compete with the incumbents with the development of the Internet.
Sure, an intern in engineering or tools would have a semi-working prototype by week three, but the first line of code would be pushed to production by… month three. A much more likely scenario: some startup beats them to the punch, exactly as it happens here, and the large company offers their founders or investors an obscene amount of money to buy them out.
RoyalRoad
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TL;DR - I use the craft beer industry as a way to understand Capitalist Propaganda, how Capitalism and Socialism are inextricably linked to each other, and how through the use of propaganda, companies use the "illusion of choice" to coerce you into believing that you prefer the products that are most favorable to them. In order to change this into the consumer's favor, you need to be an informed consumer in the free market, and raise class consciousness to overthrow the tyranny of Capitalist Propaganda, that is called "Marketing".
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You can't understand Capitalist Propaganda unless you have a solid understanding of what Capitalism is beyond the literal definition of the word, which is just an abstract ideal. Propaganda plays off of the discrepancies between the ideals of Capitalism, like the free market, which is another abstract ideal, and the reality of Capitalism in practice in America, which can be characterized as Trickle Down Economics. Capitalism sought to be a pragmatic alternative to its economic predecessors, a fact which drives Capitalist Propaganda. However, through layers of abstraction throughout the years, it has become more of a religion, as critics refer to the increasingly ideological concept as "Supply Side Jesus", meaning you give all the money to the rich, it'll trickle down to the poor, and they can "vote" on the actions of the capitalists through monetary interactions in the free market.
Capitalist Propaganda is engrained in America, because at the time of our founding, Adam Smith wrote "Wealth of Nations", which is considered the Bible of the Free Market. This groundbreaking work utilized Newton's Laws of Physics, which were en vogue at the time, to describe how interactions in the marketplace would balance each other out, just as the laws of Newtonian Physics do.
The very noble purpose of Wealth of Nations was not create the oligarchy we have today, but to do the opposite. He wanted to describe a system that would protect individual freedoms and be truly democratic. Just as Lenin and Stalin bastardized the works of Marx, so too have capitalists in America bastardized the intentions of Adam Smith.
Capitalism and Socialism are best learned side by side, in my opinion, to avoid falling into the trappings of either ideology that our brains like to do. Which one is better? It depends on the market, but the answer is almost always somewhere in between.
Through learning how Socialist concepts can be applied to problems in Capitalism, you can cut through the propaganda and will see for yourself that these problems can be solved if we just drop the labels and do what's best for society and the individual. The problem is always finding the proper balance.
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WHAT? CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM ARE JOINED AT THE HIP?
Yep. You can never live in a pure economic system. Purity is always an illusion. If you want something to be pure, you have to put a lot of energy into making it that way. Nature likes to mix stuff up. This is why ideologies around racial purity and fascism always fail. There are people who want a "pure" economic system, but they are usually the people at the top and would only get richer from more purity while the rest of society loses freedom and slowly starves.
In a nutshell, Capitalism promotes laws that benefit those with money, while Socialism promotes a safety net that benefits everyone. Every single human is born into Socialism. As a baby, you need food, someone else works for it and gives it to you, but then at some point, you are expected to exchange labor for capital, and buy your own food. See? The two are forever bound as the yin and yang. You can also grow your own food, but for that you need land, which is capital.
These interactions are very tricky. I only want to tell you enough so that you can start to see Capitalist Propaganda, because right now, you're like a fish in water that can't see water. I often use this line to describe a person who can't see their own homegrown propaganda. The best way I found to study Capitalism is by relating it Socialism, the "air" above the "water" of Capitalism, if that makes sense.
I always find it best to look at a microcosm to understand these concepts. And today, that microcosm is beer.
Mmmm....Beeeeeeeeeerrrrrrr.....
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CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE
Before I poison your mind with my own propaganda, picture you're on vacation and you walk into a bar and want to order a beer. If you really want to understand the power of propaganda in your own life, really think of this before we break this all down. Really think, what makes you decide which beer to order? Do you like to look at the labels on the tap or bottle? That's obvious propaganda. It has absolutely nothing to do with the taste or quality of the beer itself, but sways your opinion toward logos you've seen before, which is why you see so many beer advertisements, which means that money that could've gone into quality is instead going into propaganda, and you're already biased towards an inferior product. Interesting. You really can't help being swayed by marketing, but at least you can be conscious of that fact, and that's important in order to be an informed consumer.
Do you ask the bartender for a recommendation? Why would you do that? You don't know the bartender any better than the beers in front of you. How do you know they aren't paid more to offer you a beer that sucks and is 12 years old and the owner wants to get rid of it? Do you ask for a certain style of beer? Do you ask for a local beer? And once you finally narrow it down to a few choices, do you ask for samples so you can make up your own mind? You should always do this. Then we get into "flavor propaganda", which we'll discuss later. Jeez. Did you every realize there was so much complexity behind being an informed consumer and just ordering a simple beer? Maybe you'll give in and just tell the bartender to pour whatever. Choice is difficult sometimes.
If you really visualize this and take a minute to let this sink in, you'll start to understand how external forces hijack the processor in your mind to manufacture desire through the illusion of choice. However, your health and enjoyment of the beer is not the goal for these external forces, they only want you to purchase. The perfect example is fast food. They know their product sucks, but they know you'll keep buying it, but that doesn't keep them from lying about how delicious it is in their ads. There is far more at play behind the curtain. There is a science behind addicting you to things, this is reinforced by a corporate tax and subsidy system that contorts the free market pushing centralization of production through homogenization and use of chemicals to hide the homogenization, and simply because there is more than one option, they make you feel like you have choice. This, in a nutshell, is how the illusion of choice works in the free market. It's not about what YOU want. The producer manipulates you to think you want what they have. Through this, they deceive Americans into buying products with a list of ingredients that a person would never freely choose to consume. So if you want to order a beer with no shit in it, then you're shit out of luck in America. You could in Germany, but we'll discuss that later.
While you're standing at that bar, you aren't conscious of the fact that your interests are in direct opposition to those of the bar owner's. Capitalists hide this fact with their perfect smiles, but Marx described this in detail. You want the best beer for the cheapest price, and the bar owner wants to sell you the cheapest beer at the highest price you'll pay. It doesn't stop there. The bar owner flips roles in the same situation with the beer distributor, who does the same with maybe another level of distribution, and continues to the brewer, then goes to the brewer versus supplier, supplier to farmer, and even though you'd think it stops there, the farmer has to deal with suppliers of equipment and seeds, and on and on.
Add to this list their auxiliary staff of HR, drivers, managers, brewers, bottle/keg makers, and of course owners, none of them care whether you actually like the beer you're drinking as long as you keep buying more. That's the big driver here.
Did you ever realize that every time you buy a beer, your own capital is partially responsible for creating and sustaining all of these jobs involved? You, my dear beer drinker, are the true job creator. Budweiser can brew all they want, it means nothing without buyers, who are the true engines of capitalism. Instead, you're treated as a rube by suits in a boardroom somewhere.
Capitalist Propaganda tells us the billionaires are job creators, but this is a lie. Jeff Bezos can't drink enough beer to sustain all these jobs. So why do we let him hoard all the money? Wouldn't the economy do better if we spread out Jeff's money so more people could buy more beers and more jobs would be created? According to Socialist Economics, yes. That's actually, quite simply, a Socialist Free Market. Did you even know that existed? The power hungry greedy people who are too lazy for manual labor go to such great lengths to make sure you don't learn it. They want you to think that only Capitalism allows you choice in the market. I'm sure you can guess why they say that.
Capitalism maintains itself by exulting the wealthy who use their economic power to punch down. The only way this system won't fall into fascism and fail is if the consumers start to punch back. Where Marx envisioned the Dictatorship of the Proletariat as they usurped power from the Bourgeoisie, a modern alternative is just teaching people to understand the system we live in, so that we can just start making changes in the way we live and to whom we give our money.
See that? Capitalism and Socialism can get along nicely, so long as the consumers are informed.
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CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE ALIENATION OF LABOR CAUSING LONELINESS IN SOCIETY
What I described within the previous section is what Marx called "Alienation of Labor". Each step in the process of making your beer is isolated from the others, so no one feels ownership over the end product or a true connection to the consumer, or job creator. Even the bartender selling it is alienated from the profit of their labor in serving the beer, so they only focus on the service aspect of giving you the beer, because that is where they earn their tip. They can't really fix anything about a shitty beer other than to offer you a different brand. The capitalist owner is usually not there. Their only interaction is setting the rules for everyone in the bar to follow, and pay themselves more than everyone who has to follow those rules. This is part of the conflict between the classes. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just pointing it out. The bar owner themself has to spend money on propaganda to attract customers that could be spent in other places, so has to find ways to cut costs. Unfortunately, they buy cheaper beer...and this is why you end up with IPAs. No one is connected to the products, so they only look at prices and find the cheapest, passable product. This is the race to the bottom of Capitalism.
Compare this to when brewpubs were a new thing. The brewer would come out and talk to you about the beer, you would give feedback that could effect future batches and it connected everyone to each other through commerce. It makes business "social" and I think nearly everyone enjoys that, but it is losing out in competition with chain breweries that enforce isolation and make cookie cutter propaganda and cookie cutter business models so they can turn owners into managers and suck all the profit back their corporate headquarters and offshore accounts. They kill the experience and make everything transactional. And all the kitsch they hang around their cookie cutter chain bar is just to hide the fact that no one in that place cares about anything other than not getting fired. Everyone is effectually alienated from everyone else. It's worth a read to check out this page on Marx's Theory of Alienation.
This alienation is the root of a lot of misery in society. Humans are communal animals forced to live in a society of individuality and alienation. As they mope around, they seek an escape. And that is why advertising is so nefarious. It seeks to manipulate you in that state. Imagine driving home from your alienating job to you empty home, but looking up and see a billboard with bunch of actors laughing and drinking beer. They take pictures that make these actors look like friends. It's just for show. They aren't selling beer to those laughing people in the picture. They're tempting lonely people to drown their sorrows. Capitalist Propaganda is used so your brain doesn't understand what it wants. It wants friends, then sees the words Bud Light. So when the bartenders asks...Make it a Bud Light. Look at how much money they spend to manipulate and capitalize on people's suffering.
Propaganda in Communist countries is controlled by the government, so it's clear who the enemy of your freedom is. Capitalist Propaganda hides behind the layers of complexity of the same economy you rely on to survive, so you never know what's propaganda or where it's coming from. Marketers find every way imaginable to get their disinformation in front of your eyes, even enlisting your friends on Facebook in annoying MLM schemes. Propaganda invaded everything that can be legally monetized. It's in the media, and not just commercials anymore. There's product placement, stories injected into the news, and even movies and social media created an entire industry of "lifestyle propaganda", telling you how to live your life and indulge in overconsumption. It's REALLY hard to get away from Capitalist Propaganda. There is so much money and research behind it and so much depth, even this long post is only barely scratching the surface. I just want to open your eyes to it.
I can't make you see all this. No one can. I can only describe it as best as I can. What you will experience when you understand this is what I call "Economic Enlightenment", similar to what Marx called "Class Consciousness". Once it happened to me, the world looked amazing, and the shitty propagandists selling us false hope all look like clowns in a very odd circus of vanity, despair and mediocrity.
Once I understood this, I saw clearly how we are increasingly trapped in a form of Corporate Slavery, led by seriously ridiculous oligarchs like Mark Zuckerberg, who thinks he's the reincarnation of Augustus Caesar or something. That's why he has that haircut! This is a guy who stole a company and hired "screen psychologists" from Las Vegas to get you hooked on Facebook the same as casinos do with slot machines. He wants to be the funnel for propaganda throughout the world. He wants to be the kingmaker, decide what people buy, who they like, what views they hold. He can only do this because so many companies spend so much money to put their propaganda on that platform. They can only have this much money because the free market is not actually free. It's bought and paid for on platforms like Facebook and Amazon. The money that was supposed to "trickle down" is instead being spent on Capitalist Propaganda on these platforms, to get the proletariate to trickle their money up through endless, nonsensical online purchasing and local businesses who send the town's money to people who can't do anything with it but buy up properties that increase your rent and cost of living.
When people get drunk on the power of propaganda, they forget the lessons of the past. Propagandists always fall prey to their own delusions over time. In reality, your life is better without Facebook. There isn't anything on there that is healthy. Even if you just want to talk to a few friends, you are going to fall for the propaganda there. You can't help it. And if your bar advertises on Facebook, just think, that money could've gone into purchasing higher quality beer then sold at the same price, instead of going to Mark Zuckerberg so he can drop $30 million to buy the houses around him so no one can spy on him while he spies on you. You really gotta watch out for a guy who combines spying and propaganda all into a single app and thinks he's going to bring 200 years of peace to America. History is littered with knuckleheads like that. It's best to get off Facebook and encourage everyone else to do the same. Zuck only wants to lead himself to the Promised Land, and he's using your ignorance to fuel his own delusions by deluding you into thinking you want what he has to offer.
Let's get back to beer.
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IPAs AND THE FREE MARKET VS THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM
I like beer. When I worked in Germany, it was easy to walk into a bar and, like Farva, just order a liter o' beer. Often, there would only be two choices, light color or dark. As a matter of fact, even at the most famous beer festival in the world, Oktoberfest, people mostly drink the same standard type of beer, and no one complains about the lack of choice. It's quite easy. You can order with one finger. No need to see a menu or ask what's in it. It's simply beer. This worked for centuries. Consumers are fine with it. Prost! Have you ever shared a story like this and people say, "Oh, that would never work in America. Americans want choice." Yeah. Because we are flooded with Capitalist Propaganda.
So if consumer choice isn't pushing for a selection, why would a free market call for it? Imagine there are two bars and one of those bars says "30 beers on tap" and the other doesn't. You're more likely to choose it, and the other bar will have to compete in some way, often by copying. This forms trends, and people mistake this for something customers wanted. Trends are always marketing. Don't believe me? What happened to fidget spinners? So now you have a bunch of beers that no one asked for, yet will now demand. Competition creates more Capitalist Propaganda to create demand for something you never even wanted, but makes you think you do. And that's the best propaganda. You think you are thinking for yourself. This is the fallacy of consumer choice.
If you want to understand just how important that last paragraph is, consider this, "consumer choice" is the same propaganda they used to get you to carry around a device that spies on you 24/7 and sends that data to people you don't know, and you can't stop it, can you? You chose that. You wanted it. Not only that, but you paid $1,000 for the device to opt into their spying program, for the privilege of being mind controlled by the propaganda their AI selects for you. Did you read the Terms of Service? As bad as you may have thought Communist Propaganda was, Capitalist Propaganda is far better, and far stealthier. You believe you have freedom of choice. But your only choice is usually take it, or leave it. Oh, you need it for work? Maybe find a different job. Or just succumb to mass surveillance, and next year, you can drop another grand on a device with a marginally better camera.
There is a way to free yourself. You just have to understand the nature of propaganda. It took me a while, but I eventually broke free. Under Socialism, there would be laws against the exploitation of consumers. Capitalist Propaganda tells you that this takes away your freedom. This is a lie. Regulations give you the freedom to not have to worry whether the beer you're drinking has poison in it.
Germany has a lot of regulations on beer. It has the Reinheitsgebot (purity order), a law passed in 1516 that states that beer can only consist of water, hops and barley. Note, this is a different use of the word "purity" from earlier, as beer is itself a mixture of things. Historically there have also been regulations where beer could only be sold regionally, so no matter what part of Germany you were in, you only got a certain brand of beer at the bar, but it didn't matter because they all had the same ingredients. They could make wheat beers or unfiltered, but they were generally variations of pilsners and lagers. One meaning of the word "Lager" in German is "storage", meaning the beer was brewed in a way that it could be stored, allowing them to brew in bigger batches and store it.
Lagers use a more complex brewing process, so only larger breweries would make them, but this worked because of protected territories. America has a similar system, because each state has its own regulations on alcohol, but this is changing as corporate lawyers fight to homogenize the rules favorable to them, but the consumer loses control. Big brands tend to be lagers as they have general appeal to a wide audience. Did you notice this is the second time I pointed out that corporations create homogeneity? Without regulations, corporations create Fascism. That is why I tell people that we already live in the NWO but corporations rule the world instead of governments. Why do you think so few conspiracy theorists make this connection? Propagandists are paid a lot of money to keep even our small community confused about the reality of what's happening. Now, check out conspiracy and you'll see what I mean. They are spreading propaganda for the NWO over there and don't even know it. I tried to point that out and they finally banned me. Oh well. They'll figure it out in their own time.
In America, in 1978 it became legal to brew beer at home. This is what led to the explosion of new beers in the US decades later. Americans don't have purity laws, so could test new recipes. But people didn't generally like IPAs before, so how did they become so popular that they control 30% of the market? Marketing, of course. Create the market and tell people what they want.
IPA stands for India Pale Ale. It was invented by the British as an easy way to make a beer that they could drink in India. People only drank it out of necessity, as the other beers couldn't make the trip. IPAs are very easy to make and very forgiving, because if you mess it up, it already tasted bad anyway. As people started trying to get into microbrews, they often didn't have the capital to make lagers at small scale, and also wanted a simpler process so they didn't have to hire or train expert brewers, IPAs are cheap and easy to make at smaller scale.
In order to make it drinkable, brewers experimented with many different flavorings. This created a cult following of craft IPAs, where people would drive hours to stand in line for hours to try the newest concoction. The trendy nature of the craft beer world kept people training their palate to adapt to the taste of an IPA, making people start to actually like them. The flavorings made people think they were different, so even if they didn't like it, marketing tactics kept people coming back to try the latest blend. Your palate can adapt A LOT. Swedish people love Surströmming, but watch this video of Americans trying it for the first time. They tried to get me to eat it several times, but I would rather sit in a sauna until Tuesday to avoid smelling it while watching them eat it. It really smells that bad.
IPAs enticed people with popular, aromatic ingredients like bananas and pineapple. This is what I call "flavor propaganda". It's not bad in and of itself, but it can be easily misused to cover issues with quality or hide the taste of preservatives. Since we don'e have laws like Germany, you're left to rely on the knowledge and honesty of the bartender to find out. They don't make this info readily available, which is another form of Disinformation.
So if you think you actually like IPAs, just remember, you are just like a Swede eating rotten fish. A lot of propaganda went in to making IPAs popular, but it's the cheapest, easiest product to make that can be sold at the highest price, so they become popular. This is what business students call a business plan. To overcome the bad taste, IPAs were marketed as "classy" to shame you if you choose the more expensive to produce and more appealing pilsners and lagers, which were given a bad name due to being associated with major brands like Bud Light. This makes it harder to market microbrew lagers, which can only fetch a certain price due to association. And this is what is referred to as the "race to the bottom" in Capitalism.
Instead of trying to innovate ways to produce the beers you want, they just figure out how to get you to pay more for an inferior product, just like they do with BBQ. They make you think you want it. From this you can understand why "food" is full of junk that you wouldn't feed your dog. Whatever legal poison helps cheapen the product is considered "smart business", another propaganda term designed to hide the reality of doing immoral and harmful things to other humans for profit. If you make money on it, it's good. As if there aren't better choices we could come up with if there truly were a free market with an informed consumer.
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STRENGTHEN THE FREE MARKET BY BEING AN INFORMED CONSUMER
We don't need a Communist Revolution to make positive changes, so take off your ski masks and put your Antifa flags down. I like microbrew culture and still enjoy IPAs, but understanding the marketplace is how I do my part as an informed consumer and job creator to help create the world that I want to live in. I encourage you to do the same. Vote with your dollars. Don't let the Zuck-type sociopathic, corporate people in a distant land decide what you consume by looking at ads on his platform. Visit local breweries and talk to the brewmaster. Don't reinforce alienation from labor. Connect with the people who make the things you buy. Support independent entrepreneurship. These are the paths to a brighter future where we share in the abundance of wealth.
Discover Economic Enlightenment for yourself and realize that We The People are ultimately in control. Wealth inequality is greater than it was in France before the French Revolution. Don't let this train take us into the depths where another Lenin will arise and spend the night shooting people.
How you choose to spend your money today is what decides what will become the society of tomorrow. And remember, you always have the choice to buy nothing at all. I never saw a billboard that said that.
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LET THEM DRINK BEER!
I hope this gave you a glimpse behind the curtain of Capitalist Propaganda. Propaganda isn't just political, it has invaded everything and it's at full blast right now. I hope you can piece together how Capitalist Propaganda is actually designed to make you subservient by controlling what you want so they can maximize their own profit and teach you to accept whatever they offer, the homogenization of choice. However, your life is your own and you should remain in control of all aspects of it, including your desires.
Richard Wolff is an economist who studied at three elite universities in America and discusses how he was not able to even learn about Socialist Economics in the ivory tower, even though Capitalist Propaganda calls universities leftist. He found no department in America that is even willing to teach it or study it. Capitalist Propaganda censors these ideas, especially at the university. People in power don't want the serfs to learn about themselves. Check him out on YouTube. You'll realize that unchecked Capitalism leads to Fascism and Slavery, which is why they want to get rid of the minimum wage, so that we can return to sharecropping which is already increasingly happening in America under different names, like "student debt", "mortgages" and "insurance". Don't you think it's odd that a person has to go into debt so they can generate profits for corporations who really ought to be paying for this education themselves? If you have to go into debt before they'll hire you, it's much easier to negotiate against you.
If you want to see other examples of propaganda, check out this random tweet from one of America's Top Capitalist Propagandists. These are very odd pictures, and the only thing I can see in them is that they must be promoting those outfits, likely the blue dress, maybe those men's outfits as well. One thing you know is that she didn't become a billionaire by letting any single opportunity to enrich herself at the expense of others pass her by. I didn't look it up, but I am certain they sell that blue dress, or whoever does paid her to post this.
That's the main reason celebrities use social media. It's marketing. Their whole schtick is to sell garments made in a sweatshop in a foreign country by people who can't even afford a beer to Americans who are facing bankruptcy and homelessness themselves.
Read the replies of the tweet. These people have influence that vastly outsizes their understanding of their impact on the world. There are guillotines in the comments. There usually are. I'm seeing them a lot lately.
This type of propaganda is everywhere. And it's destroying America. Just like propaganda led to the demise of Nazi Germany, we could be looking at the same thing, but worse. It could start off as famine.
If you're having trouble deciding between the beers you are being offered, it's probably because you don't want anything at all, in which case the proper choice is: nothing. Or, try tap water. Maybe you're just thirsty. Now ask yourself, when you envisioned yourself at a bar, did you ever think to order water instead? Did you entertain the idea that you didn't even want a beer. That's the power of suggestion.
What if the rest of the world just cut America off from the means of production outsourced to areas with cheap labor? We would have our own famine and likely war. And if we have a revolution here, with the masses in the country being so disinformed about everything and not having any sort of class consciousness at the moment and instead stuck in alienation, the leader that rises here will likely lead to something horrifying. And we censor ourselves from pointing out the simple fact, that the only way America will survive is to tax the deluded royalty like Kim and Mark back to reality, so they can't indulge their reckless, childish delusions by selling off the very fabric of our nation to the highest bidder.
That doesn't make me a Socialist, that just makes me honest.
Enjoy your beer!
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Thanks for reading and I hope I helped you understand how you can empower yourself. I'm excited about the one I wrote for Election Day tomorrow to keep our NOPOL spirits up while all the politics clouds the airwaves. Cheers!

Jon Moxley is a name many associate with AEW - after all he is their current reigning and defending Undisputed Champion of the World. However his reign has fallen flat. He has felt empty and like he’s missing something this whole time. I put it down to COVID. His champions coronation promo saw him say that the real champions were the fans, and he would fight for them. But when they were gone he felt empty. So as per the prompt, we will remove COVID-19 from the situation. So in a perfect world, this is how I would...
Book Jon Moxley’s AEW World Championship Reign - Part 1: Welcome to the New World
The events leading up to and including Revolution stay indictable. It was a good build with the Moxley joining The Inner Circle fake out and the mini-tournament that spanned across Bash at the Beach and the Jericho Cruise ship. The Dynamite after he makes the same promo about how the real champions are the fans and he will defend it for them. The week after he then has his list confrontation with Chris Jericho. Jericho and The Inner Circle stand in their private box above the fans, cutting a promo while Jon is in the ring. Jericho says it’s was a fluke and he wants a rematch. “We ain’t in the fed anymore Chris, I ain’t handing out rematches like candy”. Jon storms up and beats down on all of The Inner Circle, hitting Jericho with a Paradigm Shift through the table covered in popcorn and bubbly to the crowds roar. He then celebrates with the title among them.
Then at Blood and Guts, it’s The Elite vs. The Inner Circle. Once we’ve just entered The Match Beyond, with Cody finally leaving his cage to join the match, The Bucks lock him out. They call The Inner Circle to a truce as they beat the ever loving fuck out of Kenny Omega and Adam Page. They mug the two men, as Cody is forced to watch his best friends and the foundation of his company destroyed. The Bucks leave the structure and double team Cody on the outside. They then leave. The rest of The Elite put up a good fight but since it’s 5-3, they obviously lose to The Inner Circle.
Next week The Young Bucks come out to cut a promo stating what they did what they did. Simply, they don’t need The Elite. Well not they don’t need The Elite, because they are the elite, they don’t need the human Dusty Memorial, video game nerd and alcoholic. Since they’re EVP’s, they insert themselves into a match against Omega and Page for the tag titles next week. It’s just as good as Revolution, maybe even better as they both have even more passion within them to beat the others. In the end The Bucks hit More Bang for Your Buck and pin Hangman for the win. They are your new AEW Tag Team Champions.
After losing Blood and Guts to The Inner Circle, after his best friends Matt and Nick Jackson turning on him and Cody and Adam Page, after losing his AEW Tag Team Championships to Matt and Nick, Kenny Omega is at rock bottom. The week after losing the tag titles, he wrestles Darby Allin in that weeks main event in a TNT Championship tournament match. Kenny comes out to a lukewarm reaction while his opponent Darby Allin gets a huge pop as he rolls down the ramp on his skateboard. He jumps off the skateboard, through the middle ropes and rolls into the ring. Ringside member throws the skateboard back towards Darby and he kicks the match off hot with a skateboard assisted Dropkick!
Allin takes Kenny to the corner and hits a Hesitation Dropkick. He then hits a Snapmare and Springboard Meteora! Kenny is already dazed and the match has only gone a few seconds. Kenny goes for a lariat but Darby ducks and hits a Pele Kick followed by Rolling Youshi Tonic! 1......2.....Kenny barely kicks out. Darby then recovers in the corner while Kenny is flushed. Kenny regains his composure and begins to fight back. He hits a V-Trigger and starts to go back and forth with Darby. Darby however counters out of a One Winged Angel and hits a Backstabber followed by Coffin Drop. 1.........2.......3. Darby Allin advances.
Jon Moxley is interviewed by Tony Schiavone about his accolades thus far and his ultimate goal. Jon tells Tony that so far he’s done all he needs to do, and that’s kick ass. And by being the quintessential ass kicker, he got the AEW World Championship. Darby Allin, Chris Jericho, Pac, Kenny Omega - all have succumb to him. Tony asks if he sees himself as being morally correct. Jon responds with “I used to know a guy who often said: I’m not a bad guy, but I’m not a good guy. You know what he was? He was THE guy.” Moxley says how he is that guy in terms of accolades, being the king of the AEW mountain. Lastly he’s asked on who he thinks will be the first to step up to him. “I don’t know who they are, but they can kiss being able to walk for the week following goodbye is all I know.”
On the final episode of Being The Elite now that The Bucks are gone - we see Adam Page and Kenny drinking at a bar, the fall of The Elite never being so present. The episode ends when Kenny leaves the bar and heads to their car, and in the rain finds a pair of aviator shades resting on the seat of his car. He puts them on and we see a man we haven’t seen in a long time - The Cleaner. This clip is replayed on Dynamite with some higher quality. That same Dynamite the Casino Battle Royale is announced to take place on Dynamite to determine who will challenge Jon Moxley for the AEW Championship at Double or Nothing.
New rules are input - all 21 entrants will draw a card. The suit of their card will determine when they come out. Each suit come out in one batch at time intervals. For the first 5 entrants - all those entrants are of the Spades deck. Then entrants 6-10 will be of the Clubs deck, 11-15 the Diamonds and 16-20 the hearts. Everyone enters at 90 second time intervals with the Joker coming out last as the 21st entrant. The winner faces Jon Moxley for the AEW Championship at Double or Nothing. Jon Moxley cuts a promo the week before the Casino Battle Royale and roasts everyone of the possible people to win the match and face him. He comes at Jericho, MJF, Pac, but mainly Kenny Omega.
Spades:
1- The Butcher
2- The Blade
3- “Broken” Matt Hardy
4- MJF
5- Dustin Rhodes
Butcher and Blade start the match off. A tag team being 1 and 2 in these type of matches always draws a pop and the two go at it before the crowd explode for Broken Matt Hardy! We hear his old Impact theme and he walks down, finally broken, finally free. MJF follows suit and the boos rain down because as soon as he locks eyes with Hardy, he starts imitating he’s got a broken back and the crowd want him dead. Dustin Rhodes come out next and has a nice moment with Matt before they start fighting. Butcher and Blade then begin to team up and try and eliminate some people.
Hearts:
6- Jake Hager
7- Diamond Dallas Page
8- Billy Gunn
9- Tommy Dreamer
10- Sonny Kiss
Jake Hager comes out and tries to dump Dustin out immediately. They go back and forth before they eliminate each other brawling over the ropes. DDP then comes out to a big pop, followed by a big pop when Billy Gunn comes out, followed by another big pop when Tommy Dreamer comes out! Tour of the dads! DDP gives everyone a Diamond Cutter, and Gunn gives a Famouser to MJF. Sonny Kiss comes out and has a face off with Dreamer. Kiss then bashes Dreamer’s face into his ass like last year.
Clubs:
11- Shawn Spears
12- Joey Janela
13- Wardlow
14- Masato Tanaka
15- Jimmy Havoc
Break from the comedy as Shawn Spears comes out and we’re getting serious. Spears takes out Billy Gunn as soon as he walks in, takes out DDP, goes to eliminate Dreamer but Dreamer gets out and fights back. Joey Janela and Dreamer have a hardcore brawl, Wardlow comes out to help MJF and they fight with Butcher and The Blade. Throwback spot, as Masato Tanaka comes out! Jimmy Havoc comes out, and joins the Dreamer and Janela fight. They use a couple weapons, before Havoc knocks a kendo stick over the head of Janela, before hitting an Acid Rainmaker to Dreamer and he falls through a table as he falls out!
Diamonds:
16- Brodie Lee
17- Jeff Cobb
18- Michael Nakazawa
19- Lance Archer
20- Kenny Omega
Brodie Lee gets a huge pop when he enters, making his AEW debut tonight. He comes in and Discus Clothesline’s everyone, before dumping out Sonny Kiss. Butcher and The Blade go to eliminate Brodie Lee, but Lee gets out. Butcher and Blade turn around and are tossed out by Wardlow and MJF. Jeff Cobb comes out and has a monsters brawl with Brodie Lee. Cobb and Lee take down everyone in the ring, and then - Michael Nakazawa. He comes out and looks at Cobb and Lee, side to side, oh boy he’s made a mistake. He undoes his thong and does his general antics before Lance Archer comes out making his AEW debut! Archer, Cobb and Lee all surround Nakazawa. Oh Jesus he chose the wrong day to be a human. Wardlow then walks in and to every direction he looks, a monster surrounds him. He then walks through a gap and simply dumps himself out to avoid harm. Then all the monsters have a huge fight. Final entrant before Joker and it’s who we’ve all been waiting for, it’s Kenny Omega.
Joker:
21- Chris Jericho
Jericho walks out with the Joker card in hand, as Pyro shoots off around him. Jericho nails a Judas Effect to Masato Tanaka who collapses to the outside. Jimmy Havoc and Joey Janela bring a ladder into the ring and take down everyone. Janela climbs to the top of the ladder and goes for a Diving Elbow to a pile of people below him, but Jimmy Havoc from behind climbs up and locks in a barbed wire bat assisted choke hold! Then everyone below team up to push them to the outside! Broken Matt Hardy and Chris Jericho have a fight, and Jericho wins, tossing out Hardy.
Eight remaining in the ring and finally after everyone hit their finishers, Wardlow is tossed out, followed by Lance Archer eliminating MJF with a Razor’s Edge to the outside, into Wardlow. Kenny Omega eliminates Shawn Spears with a mighty V-Trigger and he starts to have a great contest with Jeff Cobb. However now it’s Jericho teaming with Jeff Cobb as they’re Inner Circle buddies. They both team up to eliminate Lance Archer. Jericho then thinks “right, Cobb’ll just throw himself out won’t he?” Jericho then berates Cobb to get out, let him win - TOUR OF THE ISLANDS FROM COBB!! Kenny Omega picks Jericho up and it’s Double or Nothing 2019 all over again.
Omega and Jericho start to go at it. Jericho throws a Judas Effect but Omega ducks and throws him out. Omega then looks down at Jericho and gets his win back from him. Jeff Cobb and Kenny Omega are the final two left standing and they go at it. Cobb uses his amazing strength to nearly eliminate Kenny so many times but he fails each time. Omega then manages to get Cobb up on his shoulders, One Winged Angel! Huge pop at this as Omega v-triggers Cobb out to win the match. After the match Jon Moxley walks out. He walks up to Omega and holds his title high.
On the go home show, Omega then comes out with Michael Nakazawa, Riho and Adam Page behind him. Omega is in a white t-shirt and his tights. The foursome stare down Moxley and he tells Moxley that this isn’t the old him - this is the best him. “I have got this group of guys by my side and my lover back in Japan standing with me. I got rid of those punk ass bitches Matt and Nick, I got rid of everything from my recession era - all I need now is your AEW Championship.” The two close the show with a gigantic stare down before Double or Nothing.
Double or Nothing 2020:
Jon Moxley (c) vs. Kenny Omega - AEW World Championship
Kenny enters first. It starts with a video playing on the titantron of a montage of Kenny’s road to being led here as a version of Devil’s Sky plays. It features his friendship with Kota Ibushi, Michael Nakazawa, Riho, Adam Page and finally leading him to this moment. It finishes with a quick recap of their beef over the past few months. Jon won the first time - but that wasn’t an official match in the record books. Kenny has everything to lose going in here. It’s Double...or Nothing.
We hear an angelic voice singing the same “hoooohhhhhooohhh” on repeat as Kenny slowly rises on an elevator. During this the angelic voice is mixed with the pounding beat of the Terminator 2 soundtrack. Finally all sound stops, and Kenny walks forward. LittleVMills is on the side of the stage singing Battle Cry live from the opening piano notes to him roaring “The Best...BOUT...MACHINE” and we’re finally able to see Kenny. He steps forwards as pyro shoots through the sky, as he awaits his biggest match in AEW.
Jon Moxley makes a big entrance too as we see his entire journey from the limo to ringside with the title slung over his shoulder. He rolls into the ring and leans back like he did at Double or Nothing 1, and the match is on. Straight away Kenny hits a V-Trigger and the two start throwing punches at each other. It’s hog wild to begin with. Kenny hits a tight rope knee drop to Mox. Mox ducks a lariat and hits a Neckbreaker to Omega! Omega runs into the corner with a Corner Back Elbow! Omega then vault jumps to the top turnbuckle, Moonsault by Omega!!!
Omega runs the ropes but Mox ducks his attack and catches him with a TKO! Moxley hits an Inverted Atomic Drop and goes for a Neckbreaker but Omega gets out and connects a Superkick! He hits a Rope Run Diving Knee Strike! 1.......2.....Kick Out by Mox! Mox rolls to the outside to recover. Omega goes for a Calf Kick through the bottom rope but Mox catches him with a European Uppercut! Mox rolls back into the ring and hits a Snake Eyes to Omega! Omega lays on the apron now as Mox stomps him viciously through the ropes.
Omega gets back up and goes for a Slingshot Spear but Mox catches and hits a Draping DDT!!! 1.....2.....Omega gets his foot on the ropes!!! Mox pulls Omega up. He goes for a Vertical Suplex but Omega reverses into a DDT!! Omega hits a Shin Breaker followed by running the ropes and hitting a Bicycle Kick! Omega goes to do the the finger gun taunt but Mox having none of it, Running Brainbuster from Mox! He looks like he’s gonna cover but Omega spins around into an Armbar. Mox pulls Omega up and hits a Spinning Sit-out Powerbomb! 1.......2......Kick Out!!!
Mox gets Omega up and plants him on the top rope with an Atomic Drop. He leaves him laying there as he dives from the middle rope with a Clothesline to Omega! Omega falls to the outside. Mox rolls out there and throws him into the steel steps. Mox goes for a Kitchen Sink but Omega dodges and Mox’s knee goes splat. Omega rolls back into the ring but immediately goes flying with a Tope Con Hilo! He goes for a Exploder Suplex into the barricade but Mox gets out, Spear into the barricade! Mox could easily win by Countout here but he wants to win properly and most of all hurt Kenny some more.
He throws Kenny back into the ring but Kenny Superkick’s him off the apron. Kenny rolls to the outside and buries Mox under a pile of mats from the floor. He then hits a Springboard Double Foot Stomp onto Mox! Now he throws him back in. Omega hits a German Suplex and lines up a V-Trigger. He jumps for it but Mox dodges and hits a Piledriver! 1.........2......KICK OUT!!! Kenny gets up. Mox connects a Bicycle Kick and goes for a Butterfly Suplex but Kenny counters midair into a Frankensteiner! 1........2.....Kick Out!!
Omega throws elbows at Mox before Irish whipping him into the corner. Mox gets his foot up before he hits the corner, then grabs Omega and hurls him into the corner. He connects a Kitchen Sink and goes for a Paradigm Shift but Omega gets out and hits a Butterfly Piledriver! 1........2......Mox Kicks Out!!! Mox goes for a Lariat but Kenny ducks and hits a Basement Dropkick. Kenny goes for an attack but Moxley catches with a Kneecap Brainbuster!!! Mox goes for a Piledriver but Omega slides out and hits a Rolling Fireman’s Carry Slam + Moonsault combo! 1..........2........MOX KICKS OUT!!!
Mox gets back to his feet and dumps Kenny to the outside. Kenny goes for a Hanging Soccer Kick but Mox ducks and hits a Belly to Back Suplex from in the ring onto the apron to Omega! Omega looks like he’s not gonna get up for 10 but he manages to get on the apron and connect a Springboard Missile Dropkick while Mox was posing! Kenny hits a Cross-Legged Fisherman Neckbreaker! He goes for a Superkick but Mox twists him around and hits an Exploder German Suplex into the corner! Mox connects another Kitchen Sink! He goes for a Paradigm Shift with Kenny’s feet hanging off the top ropes, but Kenny gets out and sits on the top turnbuckle.
He then jumps from the top ropes onto the actual rope and hits a Moonsault to Mox! Mox lays on the second rope which lines up a V-Trigger from Omega! Omega then hits Croyt’s Wrath!!!! 1..........2.......KICK OUT!!! Mox rolls to the outside and walks up the ramp. Kenny runs for him he’s caught by a Bicycle Knee and Paradigm Shift onto the steel! Both men can barely get up but they do so. Kenny then hits a Kotaro Krusher on the ramp! They both rush back to the ring.
Mox scoops Kenny up and charges into the corner. Mox hits a Scoop Slam followed by a Death Valley Driver! He then hits a Dragon Suplex! He runs at Omega for another attack but Omega catches and hits a Pumphandle Dr. Wiley’s Bomb!! 1..........2.....Kick Out!!!! Mox gets up and throws elbows at Omega. Mox finally connects a Paradigm Shift! 1............2........KICK OUT!!!! Omega hits another Kotaro Krusher followed by a massive V-Trigger! He gets Mox up for the One Winged Angel but Mox gets out and hits a Neckbreaker as he comes down. Mox goes for a Running Knee - Omega catches - MOXLEY LIFTS HIM UP INTO A PARADIGM SHIFT!!!!!! 1.............2...........3!!!!
Jon Moxley defeats Kenny Omega to retain the AEW World Championship (33:41)
Brian Cage won the Casino Ladder Match, and so has a match with Jon Moxley for the AEW World Championship set in stone. It’s announced to take place at Fyter Fest. Taz cuts a promo hyping up Cage and how dominant he is. Jon Moxley interrupts saying to Cage - “the only reason you’re here is because everywhere else your piss would melt the cup.” The Machine then attacks him with a Lou Thesz Press, raining down closed fists. Moxley rolls him over and lays in some shots of his own. Taz pulls his client off and takes him away, meanwhile Cage shouts profanities at Jon. Jon raises his AEW World Championship in triumph.
The next week we see a video package we would of seen when Cage was in Lucha Underground; of him throwing giant tires around, beating up gangs of thugs, and training like the machine he is. This can all be filmed at Cody’s wrestling school. At the end of the video he says the famous line “I’m Not a Man, I’m a Machine”. Meanwhile Taz is showing up on Dynamite, confronting and calling out Moxley. Moxley responds to Taz saying he’s got his own manager to help him in the fight against Cage. And similarly to Taz/Cage, this manager is fairly similar to Moxley. He is also a famous anti-hero, who chose to not go to the other company. Taz will learn very soon who he is, if he keeps bugging him.
June 10th edition of Dynamite - Cage and Moxley have a sit down interview with Jim Ross. Both men are strapped in chairs under chains, meaning they are forced to stay apart from each other. Jim Ross firstly asks Moxley what he thinks of Brian Cage. Moxley puts Cage over first by saying he is probably the strongest and biggest guy in AEW, but that don’t mean two shits when he’s fighting Jon motherfuckin Moxley. Mox is the toughest son of a bitch in AEW, and the most crazy. “You may be a machine, but I have fought men similar to you (Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 32) and I didn’t fear em’ whatsoever because I’m fearless.” This births the tag line “Madman vs. Machine.” Moxley is then asked about who is manager is. Moxley responds it’s up to Taz if he wants to find out. Taz says Moxley’s manager is irrelevant, because he could have an entire army in his corner and they still couldn’t stop “The Machine” Brian Cage.
The Exalted One begins to hold Dark Order meetings where they discuss Jon Moxley and Brian Cage. Mr. Brodie Lee says that he should be AEW World Champion right now, and that the title should be with The Dark Order. Evil Uno tells Mr. Brodie that he got some information on speculated candidates for who can be in Moxley’s corner. Brodie cuts him off by grabbing him by the tie, and pulling him in for a punch on the nose. “What a mark...” Lee says as he sits back down. Everyone else then murmur in agreement when Lee says that. “YOU WILL NOT MUMBLE AT MY SPEECH - I AM TO BE RESPECTED.” They all laugh in fright. “Better.” The meeting ends when the lights go out and we hear the sound of a crow squawking.
Next week Moxley does his own training video package where he beats up a punching bag with a black baseball bat. Brian Cage then makes the challenge to Jon Moxley, Machine’s Rules Match. The rules are: for the entire week before Fyter Fest, Monday to Sunday, both Moxley and Cage have to do Cage’s training routine. As soon as the sun bursts out, you have to start training, and you only stop when nightfalls. And this being Florida in June, you’ll be training for a long time, in absolute heat. This is how Cage lives, and if Mox trains like this for a week, they’ll both be in peak physical condition for the match. Moxley accepts, and neither show up on the go home because they’re training.
Fyter Fest 2020:
Jon Moxley (c) (with ???) vs. Brian Cage (with Taz) - Machine’s Rules Match for the AEW World Championship
Both guys enter out looking real jacked due to their recent training. Taz is the backing man of Cage of course, meanwhile Moxley comes out solo. The UK crowd at Wembley Arena are loving Jon as he walks out through their seats, stopping every once in a while to celebrate with the title with a nearby fan. Justin Roberts asks him where his manager is, and Moxley says he’ll come when he comes. Moxley then goes to take off his jacket, and once he turns around HE SPRINTS AT BRIAN CAGE WITH A LOU THESZ PRESS!!! THE BELL FRANTICALLY RINGS!!! The commentators jump out their seats at the sudden attack and begin to call the action.
Moxley let’s rest when Aubrey demands so. He then looks at The Machine Lynn on the floor. CAGE KIPS UP!! Brian flexes, then hits a Scoop Slam to Moxley! Cage then takes Moxley down with a Lou Thesz Press! HE PULLS HIM OFF THE GROUND INTO A DEADLIFT SUPLEX!! Cage lands in a seating position and looks at a nearby camera, pointing to his biceps. Cage flexes his muscles while Taz looks for a mic. He grabs one but the fans immediately start booing. Moxley slides out and grabs it out of his hands. “Save everyone a headache.” HE BONKS TAZ ON THE HEAD WITH THE MIC!! Taz stumbles back into the announce desk.
Mox rolls back in but he’s caught by Cage. CAGE HITS HIM WITH A POWERBOMB INTO THE TURNBUCKLES!! Cage lariats Mox head off and scales the ropes. FIVE STAR LARIAT - MISSES!! MOXLEY LOCKS IN A FUJIWARA ARMBAR!! Jim Ross screams about Cage’s formerly torn bicep and how much pain he must be in. The Machine displays this with his facials. “Any man would give up at this moment...(as Cage rises out) but he’s not a man, THIS IS A MACHINE!” shouts JR as Cage pulls himself out. CAGE HITS A F’N 5!! HE FLIES WITH THE FIVE STAR ELBOW DROP FROM THE TOP ROPES!!! 1.........2........KICK OUT!!!
Cage pulls him up and goes for a TORNADO CLAW - BUT MOXLEY KICKS HIS BICEP WHILE HE’S SPINNING!! LARIAT BY MOX!! Jon then picks him up and hits A RUNNING BULLDOG, CAGE LANDING ON HIS ARM! They roll to the outside. Moxley goes for a Standing Kimura, but Cage with a HIP TOSS ON THE FLOOR!! BRIAN CAGE THEN HITS A GERMAN SUPLEX TO JON INTO THE GUARDRAIL!! The guardrail shakes at the hit and the fans feel a Moxley-covets guardrail on their laps. Taz meanwhile sets up a chair for Cage. CAGE THEN HITS ANOTHER GERMAN SUPLEX ON THE OUTSIDE ONTO THE UNFOLDED CHAIR!! Cage rolls back in to taunt while Moxley lays dead. He eventually crawls to the apron.
Jon lumps his body onto the apron and grabs the second rope to get up. No time to waste though as CAGE BRINGS HIM IN WITH A DEADLIFT SUPLEX INTO THE RING!! CAGE COVERS - 1............2.......KICK OUT!! Cage pulls him up and hits a a CURB STOMP!! He then tries for the CHAINLINK - BUT MOXLEY GETS OUT!! JON HITS THE MACHINE WITH A MONEY CLIP!!! MOXLEY IS COMING BACK BABY. He starts to stomp on the arm so Cage can’t hit the Weapon X. Cage still tries for it though and fails, and IS THEN HIT BY A RUNNING BULLDOG!! MOXLEY GOES FOR THE DRILL CLAW!!! CAGE COUNTERS INTO HIS OWN DRILL CLAW!! 1..........2........KICK OUT!!!!
Cage throws MOXLEY into the ropes and runs for a Tiger Feint Kick - BUT MOXLEY SPINS AND REBOUNDS WITH THE (wacky line...). MOXLEY LIFTS HIM UP WITH A OVERHEAD BELLY TO BELLY SUPLEX!! Cage rolls out, but MOXLEY THEN DIVES OUT AFTER CAGE WITH A SUICIDE DIVE!! PARADIGM SHIFT ON THE FLOOR!! They both lay dead. Cage gets up and crawls in, but Jon is still down. Taz screams for the ref to start counting and so they do. But it’s cut off...the arena is in darkness. “Could...this be Moxley’s mystery manager?” The fans start to get loud as a spotlight moves to the entranceway. Then...crow’s squawk...
Jim Ross has a hernia on commentary with enthusiasm, “GOOD GAWD TONY, DO YOU SEE? DO YOU SEE HIM? ITS THE STINGER!” STING HAS ARRIVED! He makes his march down the ramp with a baseball bat in hand. He marches down and points the bat at Taz, who shakes his head in fear. Taz tries to console him - WHAM!! BAT SHOT TO THE MIDSECTION!! He throws Taz in the ring and LOCKS IN A SCORPION DEATH LOCK!!! MOXLEY SLITHERS UP BEHIND AND HITS A KICK TO THE MIDSECTION - PARADIGM SHIFT!!!! 1...........2...........3!!!! JON MOXLEY HAS RETAINED THE AEW WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP - BUT ALSO NOTABLE - STING IS ALL ELITE!!!
Jon Moxley defeats Brian Cage (21:12)
With Fyter Fest in the rear view mirror, a lot of questions are left unanswered about Jon Moxley - and also his new manager. Or even is it his manager? Are they just friends? Was it a one off? Is Sting going to show up again? All of these are answered on the next Dynamite, back in the States. Moxley firstly thanks the United Kingdom fans for being crazy sons of bitches, “I had a great time with y’all.” He addresses the appearance of Sting, and answers the questions I just proposed. “I needed a buddy heading into Fyter Fest, and Sting was my best choice.” - actually, I’ll let the man speak for himself.” Sting then enters out.
However, he isn’t “Sting” - he’s Steve Borden. Literally, the make up has been washed off. Steve takes the mic, wearing his finest three-piece suit and shades, the other hand holding his bat. Sting says he’s not here out of vendetta for the fed, he’s not here to push himself to the moon - he’s 61 years old. But after being let go, he’s found a place to put that piece of his heart that belongs to wrestling. His real home is with his family, but his heart will always belong to pro wrestling from a professional standpoint. He’s got a lot of friends here, and he gets the hype. He wants to hang with his buds and watch the new generation unfold.
The week after we get a #1 Contenders Match for the AEW World Championship between the #1 and #2 on the Power Rankings - Darby Allin and Lance Archer. Allin wins to become the number 1. Darby Allin is then confirmed to be Jon Moxley’s opponent for Fight for the Fallen next week. Allin had recently gone through most of the TNT tournament but was eliminated by Cody due to some Archer interference. How he got his win over Archer, who goes berserk after the match. Afterwards Moxley and Sting come out to shake hands with Allin. The show hands with the shot of Sting and Darby Allin shaking hands ahead of Fight for the Fallen.
Fight for the Fallen opens with a Darby Allin promo. He films it in the style of his normal promos, but has a clear message. He starts by telling Mox the David Starr line: “going from one billionaire to another isn’t a paradigm shift, sounds like the same fucking thing to me.” He then tells Mox his days of making barely a buck off of nearly dying in the ring have been dead for 10 years, but Allin this time last year was living that life. Jon spent the decade in cozy McMahonLand getting a million dollar salary, before he somehow changed the landscape by collecting an even bigger salary. Mox knows the struggle Allin lives, but he’s forgotten it. He’s not an anti-hero rebellious badass, he’s a corporate shill.
Later on, Mox then cuts a promo responding to Allin. Jon says he hasn’t gotten soft, he hasn’t forgotten the struggle. Mox says he worked his damn ass off to get to be World Champion. He fought off the entire Inner Circle. Darby Allin got a single win and had to steal David Starr’s line. When Mox says they aren’t in the same league, he means it. But now Allin wants to talk big. He wants Mox to get down and dirty, live that CZW life he lived, he’ll do so. “Darby, I didn’t forget it, I just grew past it. But I’m a sucker for nostalgia and wants new is old, so Darby - it’s No DQ.” Mox walks off from the camera and that’s the last we see of the world champ before the match later - which is now No DQ.
Fight for the Fallen 2020:
Jon Moxley (c) vs. Darby Allin - No Disqualification Match for the AEW World Championship
Allin is challenging and has a Moxley cutoff mask with an eye cut out. He wears this and gets in Jon’s once he enters. Moxley gets in his face and gets slapped back, causing the beating to begin. The bell rings and the match has started. Jon continues with stomps at feeling disrespected. He throws Allin into the ring post and follows with a Back Body Drop. 1.......2....KICK OUT BY DARBY!! Moxley grabs a mic as he looks down at Darby. “I was once like you...never being able to stay down - always had to keep fighting and never listened to people’s cautionary advice. But now we’ve come full circle, and I want you to slow down and stop. But you won’t, and I know because I wouldn’t. ALLIN THEN PULLS HIM DOWN AND LAYS IN ELBOW SHOTS TO THE DOME!!
Jon looks furious and rushes Allin but HE HITS A TILT-A-WHIRL DDT!!! ALLIN THEN LOCKS IN A FUJIWARA ARMBAR WITH PUNCHES TO THE HAND AND JOINT MANIPULATION!! Excalibur says he’s trying to take Jon Moxley back to his old self and that place through this level of violence. Moxley pulls him off BUT HE’S HIT BY A FRONT DROPKICK INTO THE TURNBUCKLES!! MOXLEY THEN CATCHES ALLIN WITH A CLOSED FIST TO THE JAW!! Allin falls like a ton of bricks and is bleeding from the mouth. Moxley then scales the ropes and hits a DIVING ELBOW DROP TO DARBY!!!! 1..........2.......KICK OUT!!! MOXLEY THEN HITS HIM WITH A KITCHEN SINK STRAIGHT AFTER!!! 1...........2..........KICK OUT!!!
Moxley gets agitated at Allin not staying down. He shouts at him again, BUT ALLIN WITH A LOW BLOW!! HE THROWS JON OUT AND HITS A SUICIDE DIVE!! He lands on him with more punches and elbows. MOXLEY THEN THROWS HIM OFF RAMP INTO THE RING POST!!! Allin lays dead. After a bit of recovering, Moxley picks him up and throws him into the ring. He walks from the corner - stalking his prey. He toys with it before the kill - LOCKING IN AN STF!! Jon looks into Allin’s desperate eyes as he screams in pain. Allin places a middle finger in his face! MOXLEY BITES THAT FINGER!! ALLIN ESCAPES AND HITS A DOUBLE FOOT STOMP ONTO THE BACK!! He throws Moxley outside and STOMPS HIS FINGERS INTO THE RING POST!!! HE THEN DIVES FROM THE TOP WITH A SPRINGBOARD BACKSPLASH!!
Allin and Moxley both lean against the guardrail, panting. Darby then gets up and checks under the ring - AND PULLS OUT THE CRACKER BARREL!! THE CROWD ERUPT!! Moxley kicks him in the gut before he can use it and throws him over the guardrail! MOXLEY THEN CROSSBODIES OVER IT!!! He throws him into the railing on the stairs. ALLIN THEN JUMPS OFF THE STAIRS WITH A SEATED SENTON!! HE THROWS MOXLEY INTO THE RAILINGS, AND THEN INTO A GROUP OF FANS CHAIRS!! Allin starts to climb up the railings, going for a Coffin Drop onto Moxley laid across the fans seats. Moxley gets out the way though and pulls him down. They then walk down the stairs into a more open area, WHERE MOXLEY HITS DARBY WITH A TRASH CAN ACROSS THE BACK!! He carries the lid with him as well as Darby back to ringside.
Jon sets up a table for later use. Moxley goes to smash the lid over Allin’s head but he shoulder barges him in the midsection! ALLIN THEN PUSHES JON INTO THE APRON!! He throws him back in with the lid. He also pushes the Cracker Barrel inside. HE HITS A TRASH CAN LID ASSISTED COFFIN DROP!! BUT MOXLEY CATCHES WITH A REAR NAKED CHOKE!! His ribs hurt from the trash can lid though and so Allin easily gets out. DARBY THEN WITH A SUPERKICK TO THE HEAD! HE HITS THE FLIPPING STUNNER FROM THE CORNER!! HE THEN HITS MOXLEY WITH THE PARADIGM SHIFT, HIS OWN MOVE, ONTO THE CRACKER BARREL!!!! 1...................2.................KICK OUT!!!!!
Moxley is so pissed at Allin stealing his move, he takes him to the apron. He goes for a Paradigm Shift onto the apron - but he rethinks it. HE INSTEAD HITS A PARADIGM SHIFT OFF THE APRON THROUGH THE TABLE!!! This is the second time they’re both laying in crumbled wood after a Paradigm Shift within about a minute. Moxley pulls himself up and GOES FOR A GOTCH-STYLE PILEDRIVER ON THE OUTSIDE!!! ALLIN GETS OUT AND THROWS HIM IN THE RING, AND HEADS FOR A COFFIN DROP!! MOXLEY HITS HIM MIDAIR WITH THE TRASH CAN LID!!! HE THEN ROLLS UP DARBY ALLIN!! 1........2........3!!!! MOXLEY WINS!!! Allin gets his shoulders off the mat just afterwards and tries to get up, but he falls to the mat in pain - the pain of defeat.
Jon Moxley defeats Darby Allin (17:33)
Jon Moxley has just competed his third defence against Darby Allin, and it hurt him even in victory. The Dynamite after he brings out Allin and Sting to the ring. He tells Darby at Fight for the Fallen he felt like he was wrestling the Jon Moxley from 10 years ago. A stupid kid jumping onto barbed wire or light tubes for a slice of pizza. He wasn’t able to say “no”, he kept going. He couldn’t listen to people telling him to slow down and take it easy - he had to give it 110% every time. That is now who Darby Allin is, and he is now the person telling him to stop. He just wants to put what they did to each other in the past and move forward. Hell, Jon think they could make a good team. Darby chuckles at the idea, but shrugs and says he’s down. Sting then complaints Allin, saying he sees a lot of himself in Darby too.
The week after then it’s set to be a Tag Team Match - with Jon Moxley and Darby Allin teaming up for the first time. They will take on the trio that have recently took AEW by storm - Death Triangle. They would immediately make enemies out of Jurassic Express, with Pac being disgusted goofballs like them take the air time that should be his, and the fans support that should be his, and the rankings spots that should be his. They face at Double or Nothing - with Death Triangle coming out on top. At Fyter Fest they would win the inaugural AEW Trios Championships in a match with the Best Friends and Orange Cassidy, and since then have been dominating everyone they’ve passed.
The match main events the show, with Fénix and Pac representing Death Triangle. Sting and Pentagon Jr. are in their teams corners, and during the entrance we see Sting and Pentagon stare down in the centre of the ring. Both famous for being black and white face painted anti-heroes, with voices of silence and an affinity for darkness and weapons. The match ends when while Moxley is on the top rope looking for an Avalanche Paradigm Shift - Fénix threatens to assault Sting on the outside, which distracts Jon. Pac then shoves him off the top turnbuckle to the mat, and HITS A BLACK ARROW!!! 1.............2...........3!!!! PAC PINS THE AEW WORLD CHAMPION JON MOXLEY!!!
This means Pac is now in line for an AEW World Championship match. He cuts a promo on Jon Moxley the week after and is grinning maniacally. He reminds Moxley of their match from 10 months ago on the October 23rd and 4th ever edition of Dynamite. They went to a draw, but this time around we will have a victor. Pac then tells Jon he makes him furious - to watch him get all these scumbags (points to the fans) to like him. Why? Why would he stoop so low? Because he’s insecure. He hides his lack of wrestling skill with weapons and blood, and these bloodthirsty warthogs (points to the fans again) eat it up like the vile little leeches they are.
On the week following’s episode of Dynamite, Darby Allin is teaming with his best frenemy Cody against Brian Cage and Ricky Starks. It ends when Allin rolls up Ricky to win. Brian Cage then decimates Allin. Moxley comes to his rescue however. Moxley and Cage stare down before getting into a tussle. Cody and Ricky Starks go at it, but Cage and Starks start to double team. Dustin Rhodes then makes the save. Death Triangle come out from the stage, but then the lights go down...ITS STING!! Not Steve Borden, he’s back in the makeup and wreaking all hell upon Death Triangle. The show ends with Cage and Starks retreating to the stage where they group up with Death Triangle, meanwhile Sting walks to the ring to stand beside Cody, Dustin Rhodes, Jon Moxley and Darby Allin.
This all leads into possibly the biggest tag team match since Blood and Guts. A Ten-man Tag Team Match main events the August 22nd edition of Dynamite. It consists of Pac, Fénix, Pentagon Jr, Brian Cage and Ricky Starks teaming up to take on: Jon Moxley, Cody, Darby Allin, Dustin Rhodes...and Sting. In his first ever match in AEW, and his last ever match in wrestling. Retiring on that Rollins match is not a way to go out, and after 35 years in wrestling - this is a match to go out on. The only spot I’m having him do is: be tagged in, hit Fénix with a bat, lock in the Scorpion Death Lock, Fénix escapes, they both rush to their corners to get hot tags. The rest of it is mayhem between 9 other supremely talented men. The heels win after Fénix pins Moxley. This sets up a lot of things. Darby Allin vs. Brian Cage and Pac vs. Jon Moxley at All Out, as well as Fénix getting an AEW World Championship match in the future.
The final week before All Out sees Jon Moxley and Pentagon Jr. face off in a non-title bout. If Pentagon wins, he’ll get a future championship match. All of his other teammates have pinned Jon, so if he doesn’t do it he’ll miss out on the biggest opportunity of his career as well as be considered the weakest angle of Death Triangle. They go to war in the main event, with Pentagon Jr. hitting a Mexican Destroyer onto the floor at one point. Pac and Fénix try to interfere, but Mox uses them against Penta. He docks an attack and Pentagon ends up diving into his partners. They end up costing him in the match, meaning he will miss out on an AEW World Championship match. Will Pentagon repay the favour to Pac at All Out in 3 days? Who knows. Moxley tells Pac however that since he think that Jon can’t wrestle, he’s making it a Pinfall and Submission Only Match.
All Out 2020:
Jon Moxley (c) vs. Pac - Pinfall and Submission Only Match for the AEW World Championship
Continues in the comments...

The Mojave Wasteland was left almost completely unscathed by the nuclear holocaust that was the Great War. The city that was once Las Vegas alone was targeted with well over 77 nuclear warheads. Thanks to the efforts of billionaire genius Robert Edwin House, all but 9 of the nuclear warheads were successfully destroyed and rendered harmless to what would become New Vegas.
Having suffered only minor damage from the Great War, what is now the Mojave Wasteland was, and still is, extremely fertile ground for the beginning of the return of human civilization. Filled to the brim with countless treasures, essentially unlimited natural resources and mammoth economic/financial value, the Mojave Wasteland can be the staging ground for the great rejuvenation of humanity. A great rejuvenation with the Republic at the helm.
Look at Hoover Dam, for instance. When the NCR first found it, it was a dilapidated mess that had sat there derelict for centuries. Years later, they managed to single-handedly restore it to operational condition (they had as many as 6-out-of-8 if its energy turbines operational before 2 of those were jammed not long afterwards) and transformed it into a magnificently invaluable power station that churns out gargantuan levels of energy for the Republic.
Enough energy to fuel every last major city, town, settlement and community in the whole of the NCR. And that's only at 50% capacity! Just imagine what it could do once fully-restored. The NCR also shares Hoover Dam's titanic energy output with not only the Strip, but with the rest of New Vegas (albeit at almost non-existent levels), as well. Hoover Dam alone could very well be the key to the full restoration of human civilization in not only the Mojave Wasteland, but across the entirety of the post-apocalyptic world.
Then, of course, we also have the virtually limitless supply of fresh, radiation-free water that lies within Lake Mead. Aside from serving as a drink, this water could also be used to massively upgrade and improve the already-colossal agricultural production of the Republic and, eventually, be of immense assistance to the whole of the Mojave Wasteland's own young, underdeveloped agriculture (more on that soon). In the right hands, Lake Mead could be a major component in the rebirth of civilization.
Speaking of water, it was also the NCR that repaired the regional network of water cisterns and pumping stations, as well. Granting much easier, much more available, access to fresh water for not only NCR soldiers and citizens, but also denizens of New Vegas (albeit for a fee) as well.
While very small in significance, for the time being, and not of any meaningful help to New Vegas citizens, as of now, that will all change in due time once the Mojave Wasteland is finally annexed by the Republic (more on that, soon).
There's also the matter of infrastructure. As is the case back West, the NCR has tirelessly toiled away to repair and restore all manner of infrastructure across the Mojave Wasteland.
Aside from the most obvious example, Hoover Dam, the NCR has also restored power plants (i.e. HELIOS One, which, unfortunately, is only running at 1% capacity, and the El Dorado Substation), mines (i.e. Quarry Junction, prior to it getting overrun with Deathclaws), factories (i.e. the Gun Runners' New Vegas weapons factory) and even roads and railroads (for instance, the reason why the Powder Gangers are in the Mojave Wasteland is because they were meant to be the penal labor force responsible for said infrastructural overhaul).
True, the NCR's massive overhaul of the Mojave Wasteland's heavily degraded infrastructure primarily benefits their military, as of now, but that will no longer be the case once the NCR formally annexes the region. Once that happens, not only the Mojave Wasteland, but the entirety of the post-apocalyptic world, will benefit gloriously.
Now we examine the highly invaluable field of agriculture. Taking full advantage of its centuries worth of infinite knowledge and boundless experience with its own painstakingly extensive, but ultimately unimaginably successful, agricultural restoration efforts back home, the Republic has taken it upon itself to replicate that success in the Mojave Wasteland with the NCR Sharecropper Farms project (not to mention Thomas Hildern's plan to acquire the agricultural research of Vault 22).
An experiment that's dedicated to bringing the Mojave Wasteland's enormously gargantuan agricultural potential to life, its success could have ludicrously gigantic benefits and rewards for not only the region and the NCR, but also the whole of the Wastelands, as well. And given that the NCR Sharecropper Farms are already producing more than enough food to supply all of the tens of thousands of NCR soldiers across the region as it is, I do believe that I'm more than safe in saying that said potential is most certainly well on its way to being achieved.
Now sure, the project was originally designed to provide landless farmers and ranchers back West with jobs and sure, the project has run into some major problems (i.e. Westside stealing NCR water and radiation leakage from Vault 34's reactor that's contaminating the soil) but, at the end of the day, the potential rewards of the project's success can't be ignored.
Last but not least, we have the New Vegas Strip. Having spent well over 7 years getting ludicrously wealthy and fat off of impossibly massive sums of NCR cash due to its thriving gambling/tourism industry, a Republic annexation of the prosperous resort community would go a long way towards making humanity great again.
Not only would it more than enable the NCR to very easily reimburse all of its financial costs and losses from years of protecting the Mojave by taxing the Strip and its casinos, but it would also spark a colossally titanic flood of tax caps that'll virtually swell the Republic's already-near-boundless wealth.
Money that could go a very long way towards additional improvements to the Republic's already-unrivaled infrastructure, already-unmatched healthcare, already-titanic industry, already-unequalled agricultural production and already-gargantuan military might in addition to the Mojave Wasteland's own well-being. With the immense wealth of the New Vegas Strip, the NCR could help make both the Mojave Wasteland and, eventually, the rest of the Wastes a vastly better place.
[Note: the following assumes that the Courier both helped the NCR and took the absolute best route possible].
Here's my vision of a newly-annexed Mojave Wasteland that's now under the full control of the Republic.
I see a Mojave Wasteland that's filled to the brim with fields that are chock full of maize, beans, tobacco and cotton as well as immensely bountiful scores of trees with branches hanging low to the ground, fat with ripe, juicy oranges and apples, amongst innumerable other produce. Farms and ranches as far as the eye can see that are teeming with Brahmin and Bighorners.
I also envision a Mojave Wasteland that has become the new industrial heartland of the Republic. A massively gargantuan industrial/manufacturing powerhouse that's splitting at the seams with factories, weapons foundries, workshops, mines and construction sites in addition to a finely-crafted, highly-extensive network of roads and railroads at a level that's unseen even back West.
I see a New Vegas that has been entirely restored to its former Old World glory, a gloriously titanic city of limitless wealth, unmatched splendor and unrivaled beauty. A city that is bulging with casinos, resorts, skyscrapers, apartment complexes and even seas upon seas of suburbs amongst a vast plethora of other features.
All of which is powered, supported and sustained by the colossally mammoth energy output of a now-fully-operational Hoover Dam, with additional support from a now-fully-functional HELIOS One, as well as hugely endless supplies of fresh water from Lake Mead, Lake Las Vegas and the numerous aquifers that are scattered all across the Mojave Wasteland. Water that is distributed by the regional network of pristine water cisterns and pumping stations.
This new-and-improved Mojave Wasteland will go on to transform the NCR from what's already the dominant superpower of the post-apocalyptic world with essentially infinite wealth, the most powerful military in all of the Wastes, the absolute finest infrastructure, the most bountiful agricultural production, the most advanced technology, the most gargantuan industry and the greatest healthcare into a god-like entity with limitless power.
An entity that could go on to begin the great rejuvenation of human civilization and bring an end to the post-apocalyptic era once and for all. A great rejuvenation with the NCR at its head, and New Vegas at its heart.
That is why the NCR must not fail in annexing the Mojave Wasteland. The future of humanity depends on it.

These days, the only thing more popular than tinder itself is complaining about tinder. Women complain that they can't find good guys on there, only fuckbois and deadbeats, and men sign up, get one match in 6 months and wonder "where are all da ho's at?!" It seems neither sex is happy with online dating.
And yet, the Match Group (Tinder's parent), is on track to exceed $2 Billion in revenue this year. Clearly, they're doing something right. And men and women, despite all their bellyaching, are ponying up big cash to use the app. What gives?
They key is to understand *why* OLD sucks: they suck at doing what they say they're going to do for you, and excel at doing what you really want them to do. Hence, you complain in public, while still swiping like an addicted monkey in private.
Here is what OLD *says* they're going to do: they're going to help you meet The One: your soulmate, your spouse, your partner-in-crime, ride-or-die, yadda yadda yadda. Here's what they really do: they preserve and feed your fantasy of who that soulmate actually is, tantalize you with the possibility that that soulmate is just barely, almost, oh-so-close to being yours, and hide any sort of hard truths about relationships and people that gets in the way of your delusions. And then, you pay them for helping keep your delusions alive, while publicly complaining that they're not helping you make those delusions become reality.
BTW, this is not a secret that only Tinder knows. It's called marketing 101. A beer commercial is ostensibly about selling you a nice tasting beverage that you enjoy drinking. Yet the commercials have bikini clad women surrounding the beer drinkers while they lounge around on a beach. A pickup truck is ostensibly a practical vehicle used by people who need to haul stuff around all day. Yet their commercials are all about exploring the great outdoors and tearing up trails in forests and mountains. And most of them are bought by people who'll never haul more than a "Just Married" sign and will never drive on anything more off-road than a highway with a few potholes on it.
So how does this marketing delusion work in online dating? To explore that, we have to first analyze how people found relationships before online dating. At that time, you relied pretty exclusively on your social network, e.g. friends, family, co-workers, church, and other social networks you were in. Unlike Tinder, these social networks really *do* want to see you happy and in a stable relationship (generally speaking; and yes, they may be bad at it, but most of the time, their heart is in the right place). This is for several reasons:

1. They care about you and genuinely want to see you happy
2. Since you're a member of their social network, it actually helps everyone else if you're stable and happy, and not miserable and always needing support from the social network rather than contributing back
3. Conversely, if someone sets you up with a horrible person (or even a very mismatched person), they will face repercussions from you and everyone else when the relationship inevitably blows up. You can't sue Tinder for a date gone wrong. But you can certainly disown your friends if they set you up with a serial killer. IOW, the social network can bite back if you willfully mess things up.

Additionally, your social networks know a lot about you and (usually) a lot about the people they're matching you with. Which means they can often see through your own BS (in the way that good friends and close family usually can), and find good matches for you that you would never have considered yourself.
This system has worked for thousands if not millions of years. And most notably, OLD has none of the advantages listed above. Yet OLD has been incredibly successful and pretty much completely replaced the IRL social networks of the past. We even pay them to do what our social networks used to do for free. Why is that?
Because the mortal weakness of your IRL social networks is this: since they're not in the marketing business, they tell you hard truths you don't want to hear. I'll give you an example. When I was in my early thirties (pre-tinder), one of of my co-workers, also in her early thirties, was telling me about a date her friends had set her up with. Apparently it was a mid-forties man, balding, divorced, with a kid. She was in shock the next day. Not so much about the guy, who was nice enough. But that her friends thought that was her appropriate match. In her mind, she was still the mid-twenties hot young thing who would get cat-called in the bars. More than the guy himself, just the idea that now she was only fit for older, frumpy, divorced dads, and that furthermore *that was what her friends thought*, was too much for her to bear. But her social networks were doing the right thing. They didn't want to see her end up single and alone in 10 years. And regardless of whether that guy was the absolute best she could do, they saw her relationship value far more clearly than she did. They were a lot closer in their estimates of her value than she was.
In contrast, Tinder will happily whisper lies in your ear all day as long as you pay it to do so. In fact, for them, it's a *failure* if you find your perfect partner and ride off into the sunset, because that means you'll soon delete their app. Let me repeat that: Tinder does not want you to get married. It doesn't even want you to find someone for a year. If all of their customers found a mate within a month of being on the app, and then not check the app again for a lifetime or even a year, they'd run out of customers and go out of business. And their profits are far more important to them than your happiness.
So what are these lies?
1.
(If you're a woman), your perfect match is a billionaire convict outlaw church-going surgeon who cries during weddings. Also has 6-pack abs and a footlong. (If you're a man), your perfect match is a Victoria's Secret Angel madonna in public, whore in bed, who does yoga 6 hours a day and gets wet just thinking about your mastery of obscure Star Wars trivia. Also has no problem blowing you in public.
Yeah, neither of these people exist. Your friends will tell you that. But Tinder never will. Not only will it never tell you that, it actively encourages everyone to lie and puff themselves up into those fantasy matches. A guy who insists on talking about his "amazing trip to Machu Pichu" 5 years after he went is considered a blowhard in real life. On Tinder, that's the picture he uses to make his life seem more exciting than it really is. Every person on Tinder is trying to convince you that they are that billionaire convict, or that yoga-addicted underwear model. Your IRL social network would weed out the phonies real quick. Tinder prefers to bump them up in your queue.
2.
That man / woman of your dreams is just a swipe away. Who knows? They could even be the very next swipe! So just... flick your finger... one more time... Even if the people above actually exist, very, very few people can even meet them in real life. That billionaire dude doesn't hang out at Applebee's. Just getting into the restaurants / hotels / vacation resorts he stays at in order to run into him requires knowledge, money, and enough time spent studying the subtle class markers of the ultra-rich that you can pass yourself off as one of them. Similarly, just meeting a Victoria's Secret model requires running in their social circles, which typically means you're either a rich person, in the fashion and entertainment industry, or at least live in NY / LA and are willing to blow huge amounts of money on bribing the bouncers and hosts to let you into the closed clubs they hang out in. If you're really, really lucky, you might score a date because you're neighbors with their grandmother back in Kansas and she somehow convinces her granddaughter to give the nice neighborhood boy a chance when she's back home for Christmas and bored out of her skull. And even that's not as easy as a quick swipe, is it?
Everyone knows that to make a million dollars, you need to study hard, get into a good career, work your ass off, have a little luck, etc. Just like how your friends will tell you that to get a good girl, you need to work hard, lift, be sociable, and overall become a desirable guy. Tinder is the equivalent of the casino slot machine, which tempts you that that million dollar prize is just a dollar and a quick pull away. Similarly, Tinder tells you that dream guy/girl is just a quick swipe away. At least casinos are legally required to list the actual probability you have of winning that prize. Tinder doesn't even do that.
3.
Even if your perfect match exists, and you end up meeting them, you will often find out, much to your disappointment, that they're not a great match for you. There's a great saying: "behind every beautiful woman, there's a guy tired of fucking her." That glossy exterior image is often radically different than the inside. Every guy who has dated at least a few incredibly hot women will tell you that many of them (though not all!) are not worth the hassle. It may not even be that the other person is a "bad" person. Even a good person from a radically different environment can be a bad match. For example, if you can't name at least 5 different forks and which foods to use them with, and you think being a foodie means using A1 steak sauce instead of ketchup, then you probably won't even enjoy that 3-star meal your billionaire boyfriend buys you in Paris, while he will look on in disgust at your local hometown's "world famous" hamburger you buy him.
Birds of a feather flock together. Your social network is comprised of people who are similar to you in many aspects of your life, which makes it very difficult to find people radically different in life experience / values / outlooks than yourself. Which is actually a *good* thing because people from radically different walks of life tend not to be compatible enough to build a life together. Again, say somehow through Tinder you score a date with your movie actress celebrity crush. What would you actually talk about? Do you know anything about the movie business? Could you relate to her insecurities and what she deals with going on auditions every day where random strangers tell her she's too fat / too blonde / not blonde enough / too flat-chested / too busty to ever make it in this town? Heck, forget all that: do you even know what's a fun date thing to do in LA outside of the tourist traps that locals can't stand? Conversely, what's the chance she knows anything about your life? Is there any shared experience between you two that could form the basis for a real relationship?
Again, IRL social networks know this, because they generally know both people well, and have a good sense of who's a good match for whom. There have been plenty of times when I asked my friends about a hot girl I saw at a party, and they warn me off, telling me "dude, stay away from her. She's smoking hot, but batshit crazy." Or conversely, seat me next to someone I might never have noticed, who ends up being a great person that I want to spend more time with. Tinder doesn't ever do this. If you swipe right on someone their algorithm tells them will only lead you to misery, does it ever flash a big warning sign "Caution: Do you really want to date this loser?". Of course not. It only wants to feed whatever notion of a "perfect match" you already have. And if you think a recently paroled ex-felon is your perfect match, then that's perfectly fine with them. Don't think for a second that Tinder doesn't know that 90% of a match is based on looking at the first few photographs. It doesn't care. There's a reason Tinder is more popular than eHarmony. People don't want to be told who their best match really is (often because who your match is usually reflects who *you* are...). People dream of their soul mate since they're kids. The last thing they want is someone who pours cold water all over that dream. And if your soul mate is someone from your neighborhood that went to your high school or plays softball with your friends, then you don't need Tinder to meet them. So unless Tinder can feed your fantasy that your best life partner is someone totally outside of all your social networks (a ludicrous proposition when you consider it on its merits), someone only Tinder can hook you up with, it won't be able to convince you to trust Tinder over your IRL social networks.
4.
There's an old saying: if at first you don't succeed, redefine success. Tinder has redefined success in the relationship world to "getting a match from someone." In the real world, it never mattered how many "matches" you got. There wasn't even a concept of that. It only mattered if you eventually found someone to spend your life with. When your friends set you up and you two decide after a couple of dates that it's not going to work out, your friends usually consider that a failure, because their goal is to help you get into a relationship, not just to go on a single date. Tinder's standards for success are much lower.
Of course, Tinder has been helped in this regard by the slut-pride movement that states the marker of a woman's success and worth is the number of dicks she's had inside her, rather than the quality of the man she actually ends up with. But Tinder's measure of success is even shallower. They consider it a success if you "match" even if that never even leads to a meeting in real life. More importantly, they've convinced *us* that the app was successful if it "matched" you with someone, regardless of whether that match went anywhere. It's instructive to see women write in their Tinder bios that they're "sick of fuckbois, not looking for hookups," etc. Yes, they're stupid because they're on a hookup app saying these things, but the amazing thing is, they don't blame the app itself, they blame the people on it. Because Tinder has redefined success in OLD as getting a match. Everything else is the responsibility of the person they matched you with, even if Tinder is the one that made the match on shoddy criteria that were destined to fail. In the early days of OLD, dating sites used to advertise the number of marriages that occurred from their site. You'll notice no one does that now. Because they realized marriages are bad for business, but to avoid the dearth of marriages being viewed as a product failure, they had to redefine success and make you accept the new definition as merely being "matched". Which we have.
5.
Let's say you make it through all of this. Your dream mate actually exists. He / She actually happens to be on Tinder and both of you somehow decide to swipe on each other. Then you navigate the minefield of messages / texting / phone calls until you finally manage to get coffee together. And despite your dream match being a ski instructor from Switzerland who only speaks French, while you've never made it past your high school Spanish classes and haven't traveled outside of your state, you realize he shares your passion for watching Kim Kardashian on E!. The final question: why do you think he'd be interested in you? We laugh at the women featured on WAATGM who are all looking for some incredibly desirable guy while offering nothing of value themselves. But we all fall into that delusion, and Tinder feeds that. Once they've redefined success as getting a match, something that can even happen on accident (oops! I meant to swipe left! Crap!), then you feel like someone actually likes you if they match you. Again, we laugh at instagram ho's who define their life's worth by the number of likes their ass shots get. We wonder if they ever consider that 90% of those likes are from thirsty dudes in India and Saudi Arabia that they would never even touch with a 10-foot pole. And yet, if you get a "match" from some hot girl, even if she unmatches you right away, or after a couple of text messages, we take that as a sign that, "if a girl that hot matched with me, then surely one of them will actually go on a date with me soon!" And you keep swiping. We criticize women who think that just because some dude had a one night stand with her, that she's close to getting a relationship with him. And yet Tinder has convinced us that just because we occasionally get a match with a random hot guy/girl that if we keep swiping, eventually one of those matches will turn into a real date which will turn into a steady relationship, which will turn into...all your dreams coming true! But just like a fuckboi is only into fucking you, Tinder is only into getting you "matches". It has no interest in things proceeding further, and its algorithms are not designed to help their matches do so. Indeed, just like a fuckboi hopes you don't actually find a real relationship since then you might cut him off, Tinder hopes that match doesn't lead to anything beyond a one night stand, because otherwise, you might delete their app.
Needless to say, IRL social networks are very aware of this. Which is why sometimes they tell you a hard truth like, "dude, don't bother. That girl is way out of your league. She only dates football players." Because the last thing they want to see is you getting shot down unnecessarily.
-----------
So back to my co-worker, the 30 year old who got setup with a 45 year old divorced dad by her friends. Her friends knew she was finally looking for a serious relationship (she probably told them she was "tired of fuckbois" or whatever they were called back then :-), so they eliminated all the players and even the potentially good guys who weren't ready to settle down yet. Then they waded through whatever BS checklists she had and tried to figure out what was truly important and what wasn't, then eliminated guys who didn't at least have the important stuff. Then they eliminated people that had nothing in common with her, or who wouldn't be a good match for her personality. Lastly, there were probably a few amazing guys that checked all her boxes, but who her friends knew were way out of her league and were probably dating younger, hotter girls. And they eliminated them so that my co-worker wouldn't get her heart broken when (after sleeping with her) they decide she's not up to their standards for an LTR. Finally, after all that weeding out, they figured maybe this 45 year old divorced dad, who may not have all his hair or 6-pack abs but was still a good guy who was genuinely interested in settling down, and was still young enough to be willing to have kids with a new wife, and who was at the peak of his career and could provide a good life for her and any future family, is not such a bad match for her. But all she could see was that accepting him would mean she was no longer that hot girl at the club that all the guys would buy drinks for and she wasn't ready to do that yet.
At that point, if Tinder existed, she probably would have gone on the app, started swiping left and right, get quick reassurance that indeed, she was still that hot girl thanks to all the matches she got from hot guys in random towns 50 miles away, none of whom she'd actually ever meet, reject her friends' advice and trust Tinder instead. Later that night, when she was lonely and wondering if she'd every find a guy to love her, she'd still reject calling that 45 year old guy, who would have taken her out to dinner and maybe even found a lot of common ground and shared experience despite their age difference. Instead, she'd swipe right on a random guy who Tinder selected for her mainly based on the fact that he was within her listed age range and was only 1 mile away (even if he was only a tourist visiting from Australia for 3 days), since that's the only real piece of data Tinder actually has on anyone. And she'd fuck him that night. He'd leave before she wakes up, to get to the airport and fly home halfway around the world. And in the morning, waking up to an empty bed, she'd blame a) the guy for skipping out, even though she knew he's from Australia; b) the 45 year old dude for not being younger / hotter / fashionable enough to give her the tingles; c) her friends for thinking he was in her league; d) the entire world for being cruel and leaving her single and unhappy despite being such a great catch. IOW, she'd blame every thing out there, except the one thing that actually was preventing her from doing the work and making the sorts of compromises and decisions necessary to find and keep a long-term, happy relationship. Nope. Far from blaming Tinder, she opens her phone, starts up the app again, and goes through the swiping drill again, hoping that this time, finally, she hits that jackpot the app keeps telling her is right around the corner...
All of a sudden, Tinder making $2 billion doesn't seem so far fetched, does it?

Overview

Edit: Just to make things clear: There's an offer on AdGate to reach a certain level in this game. Your earnings aren't determined by your luck with gambling.
 
As the name implies, this is a slots game. That means it is entirely luck based, and every user is going to have a different experience with it. I ran out of chips at level 53, the next day I struggled to gain chips, and the following day I woke up to 450m chips which I then quickly tripped that to 1.2B chips. This barely got me to level 100 before suddenly winning another 3B chips on my last auto-spin.
This game frequently gives out chips, and there isn't a specified deadline. Considering this game practically plays itself, it's definitely worth doing.
Edit 2: I took a look at Huuuge Casino Slots as mentioned by u/jraspberry and it seems to be almost exactly the same. There are just a couple differences with names. This offer is $17.66 with 2x Adgate on Swagbucks.
 
^{Just in case someone doesn't know the common conversions - K stands for thousand. M stands for million. B stands for billion. So, 500m would be 500 million or 500,000,000.}
 

Offer Name	Billionaire Casino™ Free Slots 777 & Slot Machines
Offer Wall	AdGate Media
Device Used	I use Android. I do not know if it works on iPhones.
Amount	I got $18.40 from Swagbucks on their 2x SB day. Today 2/7/20 is a 2x AdGate day.
Time Limit	None mentioned.
Time Spent	I got to level 53 the first day before running out of chips. I completed the game in under 3 days. Total hands on time was maybe an hour tops. It mostly plays itself.

 

How to play & Tips

As the name implies, this game is about slots. (Note: They do have other games, but I didn't touch those.) Thankfully, they also include an auto spin feature, so you don't have to give it much attention. Just long hold the spin button until it starts auto spinning, and away you go. You may need to play the first game a couple times before this unlocks.
The goal of the game is to get to level 100. You gain XP simply by playing the game and spending chips. Spending more chips will give you more exp, and it seems to go up at a linear rate. I chose to bet 1% or less of my balance to prevent any heavy losses because my luck generally sucks. While it does feel slower, the game is playing itself, and I wasn't in a rush.
As you level up, you will gain access to more boards. If you are having a bad streak with one game, you can just swap to a different one. Make sure to use up any free spins before swapping games though, as they are forfeited when you leave. There is also a "Basic Pass" event you can do and you'll get a good amount of chips for hitting the goals for certain games. You can find this on the home page or in the individual games. If you're going to play a game anyways, might as well get the bonus. (Note: I played for less than 3 days, so this event might change).
At certain levels, you will get a 2x XP bonus for 5 minutes after hitting that level. These are often in the reward box every 5-10 levels. However, it also seems to happen with every level up starting around level 80-85. Since it's timed, it may be worth upping your bet during this time period.
Every so often you'll get a mini game that pops up. Some will autocomplete, others give a higher bonus for doing yourself, and some just disappear. If you notice it, it might be worth doing manually.
You will definitely want to join a club. It gives you 1M chips just for joining, and you'll get all sorts of bonuses. You can do this by tapping the Billionaire League button on the bottom bar of the home page. There didn't seem to be any individual participation bonus for participating in the club events, so you can chose whether or not to do them.
 

Getting More Chips

There are a number of ways to get free chips in this game.

• You can get the Billy Bonus every 15 minutes. It is located on the bottom left hand corner of the home page. It doesn't give a lot, but it helps with the daily quest.
  
• You get one free spin of the lottery every 6 hours. You will also get tickets as you play, usually from leveling up. This is located on the bottom bar on the home page.
  
• You get a free Shop bonus every 8 hours. This is located on the bottom right of the shop page.
  
• You get a bonus for completing daily missions. You get 100k for each of the following: Spin 250 times. Hit a big win 3 times. Hit a free spins 3 times. Collect 3 Billy bonus. You also get an additional 500k for completing all of those.
  
• You can get club bonuses. After joining a club, click on the "Billionaire League" button located on the bottom bar of the home page. This will take you to your club page. From here, you want to click on the "Club Wall" Tab. You then need to tap each one of the green buttons showing you a chip amount. Make sure to check on this every 12 hours or less, as some of these will expire in 12 or 24 hours.
  
• At the start of each day, you will be given some chips. You get 1k chips per friend added (up to 25 friends). You will get 100 chips for every like you get (up to 100). You will get 1k chips per day streak. For example, on day 3 you will get 3k chips. You also get a spin of the roulette that will award up to 1.5M chips.
  
• You can get 500k chips for connecting to your Facebook account. This seemed like a lot at first since you only start off with 5M chips, but in the long run it didn't feel too necessary.
  

 

Should you spend real money?

Spending money would definitely speed up your completion time. It's by no means necessary, but even spending $1 or $2 would let you finish the game quickly. Just look for the popups where you earn 300-350% more. I frequently saw a $1 offer for 70M chips, and a $2 offer for 168M chips. You can pull these offers up by hitting the "News" button on the bottom bar of the home page.
That being said, considering the game practically plays itself and there's no time limit, I didn't feel a need to spend anything.
 

Other Features

This game has a number of additional features, which you don't necessarily need to participate in as they don't benefit you. I'm putting them here for completeness, but you can just skip over this section if you aren't interested.

• You can give drinks to users. I'm not entirely sure what this does, but I think it might send chips to others. You can buy the drinks for points. You can also give a free drink when a certain condition is met (it never stays up long enough for me to read it). When winning a jackpot, sometimes it'll let you send out a round of drinks to the other players. You only get 3 seconds to do this, so accept it quickly.
  
• You can like users every 60 minutes. This will help with their daily goal.
  
• You will get some diamonds. They seem to only be good for unlocking boards before getting to the required level and for giving out "drinks" to users.
  

 

General Tip:

When you click the offer on the offer wall, download the app right away. As soon as it's done downloading, open the app right away and let it run for a while (play the game, make an account, let it sit, whatever). Do not navigate away at any point during the process. Taking too long or messing around while the game is downloading/installing may cause problems with it crediting later.
 
 

Common Questions

Can I do this if I already completed it on another offer wall or played the game before on my own?

Generally, no. Almost all of these games state that it's for new users only.

What if I do it on another site?

No.

I don't see the offer! What do I do?

It's possible it simply isn't available for you. I'm from the USA, and many offers are not available outside the USA. If you are from the USA, try checking on the site I did the offer on or on a different site. Sometimes they're only on certain sites. It's also possible that the offer is no longer available.

I completed the task but I didn't get credit for it! What do I do?

First, wait 24 hours. Most of these games credit within a few minutes, but they may take up to a day sometimes.
Next, check to see if the offer has been completed through the offer wall. If it has not, you must contact the specific offerwall that you completed the task on. For example, if you do this task on Site-xyz through AdGate you have to contact AdGate. If the offer shows as completed but you did not get your points, then the points may have been held and you will need to contact the specific site.

This takes so long! Why would you waste your time for a couple bucks?!

I play these games in between other work or on the weekends. I don't do them instead of better paying work, but rather along side it in my down time or while I'm watching TV. Most of it is just waiting around for it to do its thing. I'm also a gamer, so I enjoy playing games.
 
 

Have any more tips? Let users know in the comments!

 
Looking for more ways to get paid to play games? Take a look here.
 
^{Is there a certain game you're interested in seeing a guide for? Let me know in the comments! Be sure to include the offer name, which offer wall it's on, what site you found it on, and approximately how many points it's worth.}